In this week’s episode, Eric talks with Delbert Ty, CMO of Coffee Meets Bagel, a challenger online dating app. Delbert came up through the ranks at Procter & Gamble, working on some of the biggest brands in the world for one of the biggest marketing organizations in the world. It’s fascinating to hear how he, as a disruptor and innovator, was able to navigate the organization and do some really exciting work. He also shares how he was able to turn a new telco brand in Singapore into an overnight success with one campaign, and how he’s approaching his new role at CMB in much more crowded and advanced category. We love his approach and his prompt of actually doubling down on ideas that people think are crazy. It’s what leads to impact!

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Connect with Delbert on Linkedin and Twitter - https://www.linkedin.com/in/delbertty/

Smart link: https://link.chtbl.com/scratch 

Discussed in the show:

Notion's Campaign

Polestar 

Coffee Meets Bagel

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Scratch is a production of Rival, a marketing consultancy that builds challenger brands, strategies, and capabilities to change categories. Today's episode was hosted by Eric Fulwiler. Find Rival online at www.wearerival.com, LinkedIn, Twitter. 

Find Eric on LinkedIn and tweet him @efulwiler. 

Say hi at media@wearerival.com, we’d love to hear from you.

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Transcript

Delbert: Don't necessarily dismiss what sounds stupid at the onset. What sounds irrational? In fact, if more people say it's stupid, take a second with maybe maybe there's something there. Maybe there's something there. Because like my thing is, if you get such a raw reaction about any idea, then that is an idea that is saying something. It's not black, some basic, some may. So that's something that, you know, I would ask a lot of people to just think about

Eric: I'm Eric Fulwiler. And this is scratch, bringing you marketing lessons from the leading brands and brains rewriting the rulebook from scratch for the world of today.

Everyone, my guest today, Delbert Ty. He is the Chief Marketing Officer of Coffee Meets Bagel. If you haven't heard of Coffee Meets Bagel, it is a online dating app. So it's in that whole space with Tinder match.com hinge and we have a really good conversation towards the end about how he's thinking about differentiating the Coffee Meets Bagel brand in a very crowded space. Also get into because I was curious how he's making it work, how they're using influencer marketing, because I think that's a question a lot of people especially if you're in the b2c business, are very interested in and he even said So the big thing from him is to kind of give it away front they use influencers in large part to create their advertising campaign so he said that they don't make a single ad creative as Coffee Meets Bagel anymore. super interesting. So the bulk of the conversation as you know from the title was actually Delbert suggestion how to make an impact by being scrappy, which is something that has been consistent throughout his career, Coffee Meets Bagel, he was also the head of marketing at circle dot life, which was a challenger telco in Singapore and Asia. But actually he was at p&g. And he talks a bit about how he took that scrappy approach within p&g, which you wouldn't really expect. But he was able to make it work. So he talks about how we did that, how he focused on data, to make his points to get people to buy into sometimes these irrational crazy ideas. And I love what he says at the end about how if people think an idea is stupid or crazy that there might be something there. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Delbert Ty. Hey, Delbert, how are you?

Delbert: All good. All good, man.

Eric: How are things in Singapore these days?

Delbert: Ah, same, same, same. That's what you get in Singapore. Consistent weather all throughout. That didn't change. It's a 30 degrees every day of the year. That's, I think 86 Fahrenheit. So you love it or you hate it?

Eric: Yeah, I'm not into that I am a I'm a cold weather person, which is why I love the weather here in London. But as I was saying, I'm excited to come on my first trip to Singapore, actually, in November. So probably by the time this episode is aired, hopefully we will have met in person and I will have gotten to see a little bit of what's going on over there. But hey, I really appreciate you making the time. I'm really excited about this conversation, we emailed a little bit ahead of time. You're much more prepared than a lot of guests on here. I'll say it that way. But I really liked the topic that you came up with. So I'm just gonna go straight into that. Oh, sorry, I forgot the icebreaker question. First, tell us about a brand that you are obsessed with right now and why?

Delbert: So I have I don't know if it's cheating, but I have two. So the first one is notion. I don't know if you use notion.

Eric: It's so interesting. You say that because I just posted a something on LinkedIn about how I really don't like their recent ad campaign. But that'll be good. That'll be good, good conversation, but continue. I do no notion.

Delbert: I actually haven't seen much of the recent ad campaign. So what I'm saying is not a reflection of that. Okay. More, what I'm saying is how they've built the brand. Seemingly organically, very much bottoms up very much community driven. And how in spite of that lack of I would say, you know, the precision that you would normally do like if something was super well produced high production, big brand kind of launches, but the way that they've done it is a lot more organic. And what's interesting about that is the consistency in everyone's perspective or perception of what notion is the visual iconography The white people love it like the look feel. I think that's something that evokes something super consistent across all the people I know who love notion. And that's, that's pretty amazing for, for how they've done it, it doesn't seem as surgical or rehearsed or, or as intentional as other brands, but it seems you'd get the same level of consistency. So that's why I love it.

Eric: I actually totally agree with that. And it's a really good point. I hadn't thought about it that way. But actually, now that I do think about it, I don't know exactly who they consider their competition, but Google Docs, Apple notes, which is what I use, just because of the convenience of it and the lack of cost, Evernote, which I haven't heard anything about Evernote in a long time. Actually, I do think for the most part, it was very anecdotal just for me, there is much more of a consistency in the people I talked to about notion versus those others. I think everybody has a different perception and probably a different relationship with. Yeah, so I think that's interesting. I wonder if there's something out there about how they've done that. That'd be interesting to check out. But I will my my was just like a little bit of a rant. Because I've been thinking about this a lot. And it's a lot of the work that we do. There, the recent campaign that they've launched, at least here in London, it's an out of home campaign, I'm sure there's other channels that they're on as well. But that's the one that I saw on the tube. And it was just a picture of someone looking happy in front of their computer. And it had all the icons from notion. And then it said in big bold font for life's work. And I was kind of like, okay, I get what you're trying to say like you can do all your stuff here. But how does that differentiate them from all of the other note taking apps like you can do all of that stuff anywhere else. And so I feel like it was interesting posting it on LinkedIn, because there was a good debate about it, a lot of people really like it. But I think that they kind of stopped halfway in the brief in developing the strategy, they got to this point of okay, well, everybody can do anything they want. It's for professional, it's for personal, it's for hobbies, it's for whatever. And I think they should have pushed it further to actually say, okay, that's what we can do. But then, and this is kind of our methodology about building brands, then you need to contrast that and find the whitespace between what you do and what your competition does. So that was my beef with at least the marketing. But I totally agree with you about the product and the brand.

Delbert:I see I see what you mean, I think I've seen some of some of the people I follow on Twitter share some of that, and they love it. And I think I think you have to judge it based on the brief if the brief was, hey, let's make something that will make our users or will give a smile to our users, because they know it's one of those if you know, you know, you know, they then spark on like, it affirms how people who already use notion, like feel about it. But that kind of I don't know if that makes sense purely from an ROI perspective. Because if you spend this much money, you want to get users all of those things, right. So that part I have to think about, like what was the strategy? What was the intent? If the start was just was just that just making them happy, giving them something to you know, feel like feel nice about them? Yeah, I guess that's good. That's very charitable of them. I have to say

Eric: Alright, so what's your second brand?

Delbert Second round is like the opposite. We're in its surgical position. It's Pollstar.

Eric: Yeah. I saw my first pole star car on the street outside my house. So I actually know very little about the business in the brand. So I'd love to hear you elaborate on that.

Delbert: Yeah, so Pollstar was basically, originally Volvo's performance brand. So a lot of the car manufacturers, they have a performance sub brand we're in that's where they kind of put the latest and greatest stuff, push the boundaries. And they eventually spun that off into its own company to be the electric only car company. So So postar right now is technically its own company, but its Volvo roots are everywhere. So if you look at the car, the styling, even the interiors, it's very much Volvo. But the way that they've built the brand Pollstar, I haven't seen a brand been built with that much surgical intentionality as this like if, like there her brand books are winning awards. The way they have a look and feel consistent across their stores, which they called spaces, it's called Pollstar spaces, they don't call them stores spaces, and then all the personnel in the space, they were the same thing. It's kind of like almost like how Apple branded their genius bar, we're in the geniuses kind of wear the same thing. It's super duper consistent, all the way to their merch, everything feels really premium. And they sum it up nicely with three words. Pure progressive performance. So that's how they kind of some of the brand, which I love the simplicity of it. And, like, again, like I use the word surgical, because that's how it feels like when you see all the assets come together, it's wow, like, it's, it's a work of art.

Eric: I'm definitely gonna have to check that out. And yeah, I knew that about Volvo. And that that was kind of its heritage and where it came from. But I definitely want to dig into that, because I think that's really interesting. And it seems like part of that, to your point about differentiation, which I know we're going to talk about with your current role in the sector that you're in. It does seem like part of that is to differentiate from Tesla, right, like the leading challenger in the category or now the incumbent for electric vehicles. That's cool. Great answers. All right. So as I teased briefly, we have already aligned on kind of what the thesis is, probably even the title of this episode is going to be and that is how to make an impact by being scrappy. So you kind of cut your teeth came up through the ranks at p&g, big brands, incumbent marketing, organisation, marketing lead organisation, so I'd love to hear a little bit about that. And then I think a lot of it and where you really made your mark. And I've seen some of the work that you and the team did. And I think it's really exciting was that circles dot life challenge or telco in Singapore. And now it's what, six, eight months in at Coffee Meets Bagel. So why don't we just start there. So tell us, maybe tell us like a little bit about your career and how you developed this focus on an ability to make an impact by being scrappy. And I guess I guess kind of what I'm getting at is, I would imagine, and this is, as I was saying, Before we press record, one of the red threads throughout a lot of these scratch episodes. And what we're really trying to get at and understand as a business is the difference between how incumbents market and challengers market. And I think your background, you know, PNG two circles that life, I would imagine that there was a contrast there. So I'd be curious how, how making an impact by being scrappy, how that came to be something that you're really passionate about, and clearly very good at.

Delbert:Yeah, so I guess, you know, one thing about me is, I like doing things, or, like, rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty. Like, I like getting into the thick of things. And when I was in PNG, I was, you know, one of the things I was quite fortunate with was I was working on one of the biggest brands a tide it's a laundry detergent. It's you know, it's the biggest laundry detergent, arguably in the world. And despite its size and obvious political impact within PNG, because everyone wants to, you know, have a piece of it. I was fortunate enough to do a lot of scrappy things even in PNG, or in get involved with packaging, demo creation, a lot of those things, which wouldn't normally be part of the job description, but because I liked getting involved in really rolling up my sleeves. It was something I enjoyed, like one of the things I remembered back in BMG, and again like imagine fresh crab and growing up in the Philippines, I never did my laundry. So I had no idea how Luffy is done. One of the things I did to really immerse myself was literally spend hours with moms random moms, like you know, weird recruit, recruit to consumer consumer research companies and just sitting next to them and understanding why they did certain things. Why they scrub this way why described that way? Why they stopped this long, like asked all the dumb questions. And that gave me a lot of insight as to You know, what actually made sense for them how their minds thought. And so I could apply those things into the things that I was working on whether it's a demo, how do you show the tie this better than the other brand? How do you show differentiation, all of those things. And I could do it in a way that is using the words that the mobs would use or using the, you know, visuals or actions that the moms would use. So that's something that, for me was, early on in my career, something I knew that I enjoyed and something I knew to have made me more effective in my job. So when I, when I left PNG, and moved to circus life, because it is a startup, a lot of those things are kind of expected, you're double happening, you're doing multiple things. So it wasn't that big of a shift. The other thing that made it quite easy in terms of a shift, I will say relatively is PNG is an extremely principle based company. When you talk to people and have debates, the debates are always about principle. Like what are we trying to do? What's the main objective and it's it's it's very framework driven. And joining a company like circles life, which is founded by people who worked in BCG, McKinsey, in big companies with a lot of history when it comes to structured thinking. My landing spot was quite soft, because that's the language that I knew to speak. So I could have these kind of conversations, these kinds of arguments, debates, challenging each other in a way that was quite similar to p&g. So I think those those things are quite similar. If there's one thing that's a big differentiator, and this is how I kind of think about that they caught me between startup and not startup is the lack of process. In PNG is a big company. As you can imagine, there's like a million process processes for all these like small things. Literally, buying something from a vendor probably has like a 10 page process, document. So obviously, with the startup, there's none of these. And being the guy who would figure out all sorts of ways to break the process to get stuff done. I've now turned into the guy who's creating process, so that we can do things properly. And you know, with consistency, and that's kind of how I define the dichotomy between the startup in that startup. If you spend more time breaking processes, then you're not a startup. If you spend more time creating processes, then you're probably startup.

Eric: So I think that's really interesting focusing on that. But I actually want to ask, so I think, you know, as you described your role and how you approach things at p&g, there's a lot of people that try to come in, disrupt process, do things differently, shake things up. And it doesn't work out like that is the vast majority, for sure. So how did you make it work? I mean, you were there for what, seven, eight years? How were you able to bring that type of approach, be scrappy, do impactful work? Clearly, you know, speak the language and work within the system, but also push them to think and act kind of more like a challenger? In a way?

Delbert: I think the foundation is always knowledge data. And one of the things that I did in PNG was really get into the weeds of the data. There's a this extremely archaic tool that BNZ used back then I don't know if they still use it now. I hope not. It's called desktop reporter and most people probably have not heard of this tool, but it's a way for you to get into the raw consumer data, do pivots, do all these things so that you get some kind of understanding and insight. And the way p&g works is there's like the, the number one rule is whomever has more data, wins argument. Like that's the number one rule. So in my case, whenever I wanted to push for something, I knew how to win the argument by having the data. If I didn't have the data, then I have no right like, in fact, one of the things I remember was being the pitch of the marketing director who hired me on BMG. He said that impianti were a brief flat organisation and whether you're an in Dearne are your GM. Anyone can say whatever they think. However, the more junior you are, the more data you need to back your argument, the more experienced you are the more stripes you have, then, you know, opposite is true. But yeah, like that's how I made it work because I understood that fundamental rule. So to me, if I were to win any arguments, or if I were to get away with anything, I need to have some kind of justification that's based on data.

Eric: Yeah, it's great. I love that of focusing on the data. Because that's, well, for the most part objective, it's harder for people to argue with numbers because a lot of the a lot of the conversations that we have, and a lot of the things that I'm personally interested in, because we work with a lot of startups, we also work with a lot of big organisations is, how do you get them to think and act different? I know that a lot of the people listening are in those roles. And that's a question we get a lot. So I'm always interested in how people were able to do it successfully. Okay, so let's touch on circles dot life, because I know you did a lot of effective, impactful work there. So how did you? How did you? What was your kind of approach? What was your model to building this challenger brand, in a very traditional space of telco in Asia? How were you able to build a brand that was impactful and stood out?

Delbert: I think, standing out and being different in this space, was kind of easy, because the incumbents were so traditional. So yeah, so traditional. And to do anything that is somewhat modern, or somewhat authentic, is, is going to already create that differentiation for you. So my approach was, really take what I learned in PNG, and that's know who your customer is, know what you're selling, and know how you're selling it. So those are like the basic things I learned in PNG I, I literally just copy pasted the same thing. In circles life, I thought about who we're going after, which is people who are digitally savvy, this was back in 2016. So I would say ecommerce penetration is less than half of where it is now. But, you know, still, lots of people were pretty digitally savvy, ride hailing revolution was still kind of, you know, going on, it's not as like, as prevalent as it is now. But that was really who I was going after. Now, what was I trying to say at that point in time in Singapore. It was the time when the telcos would tie you up in a long contract and give you measly amounts of data. So for us, the basic, what we're selling is like, Hey, here's a tonne of data and you have the flexibility to leave whenever you want. And then, which leads us to how, and that was really, the easy part. And the fun part as well. Like, let's create a brand that is different. That is colourful, not not just a boring, red, or green, or orange, but something that kind of brings all these different colours together and something that is fresh, something's new. And let's ruffle some feathers. So that was the that was the idea. And the way that we, you know, first got our I would say kind of big break we're in. It was one of those. You could describe it as an overnight success. We're in like, literally the day before No one knew about us. The day after people knew about this was we launched this big campaign. We're in we vandalised some billboards in Singapore, and this cultural newless Like, you know, like when this obviously like, everyone's from different parts of the world, right? And maybe if you're some from the Philippines or New York or wherever, right? Federalism what's, what's the big deal, like, this is Singapore. So Singapore is pristine. And you had to know it. Like I've been living in Singapore for a couple of years. So I knew like the boundaries, like where I could push and like, what things I could do. So that was something that we did and we basically created a fake brand that lampooned the incumbents. And which talked about what they're currently selling. And we we got some influencers to vandalise that and then they shared it on IG stories went viral. We got With the press, and within less than 12 hours, the media owners asked me to please take it off. Like, they needed my consent to take it off. I was like, Yeah, damage is done, we got what we wanted, take it off, leave it blank. And that was our first big win. And, again, it's one of those things we're in, it was easy to differentiate, because we will just ask ourselves, is this something that the incumbent will do? If it's something that the incumbent will do, hey, maybe let's not do it. But if it's something that they won't do, then it makes it all the more exciting, like, hey, there must be something there. And so that's one of the things which was pretty scrappy. And that was done. I will say, in the span of two weeks, it was me and the team, we were in a small office. And we were thinking of how to kind of really make a big mark on this campaign, instead of just spending a tonne of money, like, how can we make this really pop? And we were brainstorming, and one of the seeds of that idea is actually another thing I took from PNG. And it's so funny, like how many things I was able to take from my experience in PNG and apply in a new context. So the other brand I was working on while I was in Fiji was Pantene. And Pantene has this campaign concept that they've done multiple times over in different parts of the world. They call it mystery reveal. We're in the whole campaign goes, we're in Bill's show a mystery shampoo brand. We're in, like nine out of 10 women have tried this mystery shampoo brand. And they say it's amazing. Who could it be. And then after a week, it's surprised it's spending. So they do that. And it's it's pretty effective and a lot more sophisticated in how I voiced it out. But so I took that kind of same basic concept and apply that here we're in the mystery is this fake brand. And then the reveal was like it was all circles life all along. So that's something that was, like, really, really fun to have done.

Eric: So I had a question in my brief, and I wasn't sure where I was gonna slot it in. But I think I'm going to do it here. So in your LinkedIn bio, you have something about you and your approach to work that is growth through a rationally rational ideas. So I'd love for you to expand on what that means, because it's certainly the first time I've seen it. And how that ties to the billboard vandalism campaign, the big reveal? How has that kind of guy to do? It must be important if it's something that you put as kind of a descriptor of who you are as a marketer.

Delbert: Yeah, so it's how I articulate things which are not obvious are not intuitive on the onset. But actually make sense. Like, if you in hindsight. So take the example of the vandalism thing, if Imagine me going up to the founder and say, Hey, let's spend 20 grand on a fake brand. And I'm going to vandalise it. So that definitely doesn't sound like a great idea. But in the context of what we were trying to do, it makes sense. So that's what I meant by it's irrational on the onset, but when you kind of put it in the context of what you're trying to do, it makes sense. A similar example, I had was in Taiwan, we, we we again, like we had the similar thing in Taiwan we're in we wanted to break people free from contracts, because Taiwan had one of the longest telco contracts in the world, like up to three years. And so what we wanted to do was, you know, show us your telco contract bill, and we'll pay you the money, I'll give you actual cash, here's actual cash so you can break free from your contract, whether you join us sign up for another contract up to you, your your choice, freedom. So that was the whole thing. And when we did that, it was quite exciting because like, the night before, a line had already formed in the event venue. And I didn't budget a lot of money to give away, you know, we don't have lots of money. So it was like, I think we gave away 20,000 USD. So not a lot, not a lot. And that was for 40 people. So Our CFO asked me, Hey, why are you doing this thing? Why are you giving $20,000 to 40? People? That's not enough to make, you know, their lifetime value. And all this kind of makes sense for two people, how much money will they make for us? And so then I had to explain, like, actually, I don't care about those 40 people, it's what happens after the fact, because people are going to talk about it, we're gonna get mentioned all of those things. So that's an example of something that's seemingly irrational on the onset. But when you see it in the larger picture than Oh, that's why it makes sense. So I love these kinds of things. Because yeah, because it's, it's, it's so unpredictable.

Eric: I want to segue to talk about your new role. And the new category, online dating, or dating in general, that you're in with Coffee Meets Bagel and the Segway, the kind of bridge that I want to take, as you talked about how, in the telco industry, and I've seen a lot of this in financial services and banking as well. The way that I describe it is the bar is often very low, in terms of these brands, how they're thinking about marketing, like they're so traditional, you said that word a couple times. So now moving into a category that has a lot of challengers, has a lot of kind of buzzy brands that are doing viral, exciting challenger type things. How do you think about or how has your approach changed to making an impact to building a brand that's differentiated in a much more crowded, I would almost say advanced space when it comes to brand building.

Delbert: Um, so again, like this is something for me, that is pretty straightforward. Because if I think about CMB, and how the founders of CMB built the brand, has been extremely consistent and already quite differentiated when I kind of came on and, and the positioning where CMB sets and how it's different. Different is, they're all about serious relationships. While the other brands, like if you think about the big brands, like let's say, Tinder, Tinder is you know, for fun, cashflow, meet new people kind of thing. Bumble is kind of the same. And if you think about the space globally, you'd be hard pressed to find some another brand that is really doubling down on serious relationships. Globally, I can think of, there's a two brands in Japan, but they're very focused on Japan, they're not expanded globally. Hinge kind of, but a little bit more serious. But like for CMB, like the way we think about this, like, hey, it's really the real deal serious, like people on CB, are they're looking to find someone who can, who can they can be with, you know, for the long haul. And that's the differentiation. And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense why most brands are not in that space, or there's not a lot of players in that space. Because it's the monetization thing like Pete, like the traditional way of thinking about the spaces, Hey, you want to keep them coming back. So that you can keep them, you know, paying you, right? And if you get them the level of their life, they turn out, they're not going to pay you any more money, right. So, like, that's my logic, why I think the space has evolved in this way, when you have lots and lots of players in this kind of casual space, and very, very few in this like really serious kind of relationship space. And the only other brands that really play in this space are either for older people or more traditional matchmaking services. So I feel that the space that CMB is in is is is quite differentiated enough that you know, we can we can do things that really build the brand there.

Eric: So what are you most excited about right now? Because you're, you know, six months in so you've gotten situated. I know, a lot of the team is in the US. So there's kind of been the timezones remote work thing to adapt to. But let's say you're kind of mostly up to speed and settled in right now. You must kind of have particularly as we look at closing out this year going into next year, a bit of a roadmap and I'm sure worth knowing a little bit about you now, some big ideas of what you want to do and try to make a splash make an impact by being scrappy, to the extent that you can share, what are you most excited about over the next 12 to 18 months? At CMB?

Delbert: Um, I think the the thing that I'm most excited about, like, in the next six to eight, six to eight months is how a lot of the foundational work that we're doing now can help us in that scale up period. So how can we amplify the existing organic growth? Because one of the things that I, you know, I'm very fortunate to inherit in CMB, is CMB is growing organically in lots of places, I don't need to lift a finger like some influencer will, you know, mention us and then I just see a spike, and then, you know, job well done. But, so that gives us a lot of space to do a lot of foundational things, and I'll share some of that. So I talked about the brand, and how the brand is fairly consistent. But one thing I did want to want to kind of ensure is how do you take that consistency to, to the surgical level almost like the poster level? If that's the aspiration, right? Like, how do we make sure that everyone who's describing as using the same words, whether its internal or external? How do we make sure that all the things that we do are directly or indirectly related to that space? So for us like, it's, it's really centering that and that allows us to do more impactful activities, creatives later on, and that's something that I'm excited about. So that's something that team is working on. The other stuff. And I will say this, I guess, maybe most marketers would find boring, but I find that fun as well, is a lot of the low hanging fruit experiments that we're doing right now really understanding how to best create value for the right user. And when I say create value, it's really presenting them the offer, or presenting them the opportunity to upgrade to different kinds of subscription, all these kinds of things that are still yet to be tapped, that we can, we can definitely leverage a lot more of, and that translates into growth, revenue, and success for the team. So that's something I'm super excited about. Because those things compound, when you put more money in when you scale things up, those things that we're doing now are compounding. So that's something I'm super excited about.

Eric: I'd be curious just because you brought it up, and I'm always interested, because I think it's while it's been around for a while, it's still such an early evolving space. Influencer Marketing must be a big part of what you're doing with a business like this. You mentioned kind of the earned media of people just talking about it word of mouth, let's call it but when it comes to paid, or organic influencer engagement and scaling that, how are you approaching that? And how are you making it work?

Delbert: Um, so the way that we're doing it now is we're not working with the big ones we're working with. I don't know what's the word now the like, seems like there's a new buzzword like micro influencer creator, but we're, we're working with a lot of these, like smaller creators, and, and leveraging them in our advertising. In fact, like one of the things that is quite interesting and CMB in the way that, you know, we've been doing it since I joined is we're we don't make a single ad creative, ourselves. Everything is done through creative or through creators. So when we spend money on these kinds of creatives, it's really funding these creators to tell their story about CMB how they found CBD or what, how, in such way they are related to CBN sometimes there's really interesting stories like we just started using this creative of divorce lawyer, and how this divorce lawyer, you know, having seen so many couples fail, talks about like, Hey, these are the things that you know, are required for successful couples to, you know, to stay on and these kinds of things. Fuel The narrative of CMB being a space for serious relationships. And I think that's something that is completely new and completely different. I would say then, what myself would do 15 years ago and bng, like completely letting go of the reins of the brand, letting the Creator tell the story. Yeah. But that's the way that you need to do it. Exactly, exactly. Exactly. In fact, like, I go as far as to say, I can't imagine, myself at least I can't say for everyone else, like spending on the big brand campaign, like the old days.

Eric: All right, so we are out of time. But before I let you go, I want to try to sum up this conversation or let you sum up this conversation by asking, what is one thing that people should do differently after listening to this?

Delbert: Um, I think one thing that people should do differently is don't necessarily dismiss what sounds stupid at the onset. What sounds irrational? In fact, if more people say it's stupid, take a second wave, maybe maybe there's something there. Maybe there's something there. Because like, my thing is, if you get such a raw reaction about any idea, then that is an idea that is saying something. It's not black, some basic, some may. So that's something that, you know, I would ask a lot of people to just think about, and to make it a bit more specific. If you want to do something that's different. Think about what your competition is doing. Do the opposite. If you do the opposite, and then they if they tell you like, Hey, don't do that, that's really stupid. Maybe there's something there.

Eric: That is a fantastic way to sum it up and a great place to leave it. So Delbert, where can people connect with you find out more about what you're up to, if they're interested.

Delbert: I'm, I'm I'm on LinkedIn. So you can just look me up. I'm also on Twitter. And yeah, like that's, that's really where I am. I have an Instagram feed, but it's it's more you know, just pictures of random stuff has nothing to do with what I do at work. So

Eric: Alright, well, we'll include the LinkedIn and Twitter link in the show notes. Delbert, thank you so much for joining me really enjoyed this conversation. I'll let you while it's the end of your day over in Singapore, so I'll let you get to the weekend. But hope to see you when I'm over there in a couple months.

Delbert: Definitely. We'll catch up

Eric: Alright, take care.

Scratch is a production of rival. We are a marketing innovation consultancy that helps businesses develop strategies and capabilities to grow faster. If you want to learn more about us check out wearerival.com If you want to connect with me, email me at eric@wearerival.com or find me on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, share with anyone you think might enjoy it. And please do leave us a review. Thanks for listening and see you next week.