The Art and Science of Driving Growth, with AJ Patel, VP of Global Growth at U Beauty

Transcript

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Peter Crosby (00:00):

Welcome to unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute when money was free. The term profitable growth used to be an oxymoron in the world of startup DTC brands, but no longer profitably. Attracting and keeping consumers has become essential for today's DTC challenged brands. And it turns out that achieving that is a deep mix of analytics, media, and creative skills that are constantly in a mix of testing, learning, and scaling modes. AJ Patel had a career at Unilever spanning those skills and modes, and he has now lept to the startup world at U Beauty. He joined Lauren Livak Gilbert and me to share some of those learnings and how he and his team are applying those in a startup context across every shoppable moment. AJ, welcome to the podcast. We are so delighted to have you on. Thank you.

AJ Patel (01:08):

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Peter Crosby (01:11):

So it's great to talk to you, particularly because you've been in commerce in e-Commerce, you've been on the front lines for a while now, and you've seen a lot of the changes and how e-commerce has changed going to omnichannel, et cetera, been at large scale brands, smaller scale brands, and so you've kind of seen it all and then now you sit in a growth role at you Beauty. So we'd love for you to tell us how you got to this role and what your responsibilities are.

AJ Patel (01:42):

Yeah, so I started my career in beauty at Unilever, worked there for eight years, started in the analytics space and data science, and really understanding what was driving direct to consumer growth for brands in the portfolio. And kind of transitioned away from that a little bit into my career, into more of a commercial role, started managing some of the media channels and then took over one of the brands, e-Commerce core functions, and was global head of e-comm for one of the brands within the Unilever Prestige portfolio for a few years. And then this opportunity with you, beauty came, I think it was kind of accidental to be honest. Wasn't really looking for a new position or a new role, but felt that the brand was showing a really strong growth trajectory, saw that there was really some strong legs, and that there was a lot of potential within the brand, and decided that it would be a great step. It would be a great opportunity for me to take a chance and risk kind of joining a startup and UBE the best opportunity for me.

Peter Crosby (03:02):

I love the path that you've taken by starting out in analytics. In some ways you're tackling the hardest part of it all, trying to understand what works, how do you communicate that out, how do you act on it, providing that advice, and then through media and then sort of took on, okay, now how does all of this actually get to market? So it seems like a great training ground for understanding how to drive performance, which is your role now. And did it feel that way at the time? I mean, how much of it was sort of, oh, I want to do that, so I'm going to do these things, or was it more just kind of happenstance and you did a great job and they're like, Hey, try this. What was that path?

AJ Patel (03:50):

Yeah, I think that first off, kind of shifting from analytics to more of a commercial role is very atypical. I mean, I think that there's probably a handful of people that I've spoken to that have kind of taken that, especially as deep into analytics as I was at the time, have taken that path forward. But I think that for me, truly understanding the data has really been invaluable as I look to grow business and look to scale you beauty. And I think that obviously there's a creative aspect to any kind of commercial role in the e-commerce space, but having the core fundamentals of analytics down and really understanding what's happening within the data has proved super valuable. And as we look to kind of the multiple channels and look at understanding what is driving and fueling the growth of the brand,

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:54):

And I feel like AJ, a growth role is actually a new type of role that may not have existed previously. It used to be just head of e-com or head of sales or head of marketing. And this growth kind of title is a new type of role that we're seeing evolve. One I think is very necessary. But can you talk a little bit about how maybe that combines all of those different elements of that role into your growth role?

AJ Patel (05:20):

Right. Yeah. I think that growth is, well, number one, any brand, which is not what is doing something severely wrong, but fundamentally, I think that when you think about growth, it's really an encapsulation of all of those functions. Right? Before you used to have a person who was really an expert on e-com and understood the site metrics and maybe was doing more of the development side. And then you had this other person who was doing marketing and was really doing paid media investment, and they really didn't speak well with one another. So this growth role is encompassing both of those and really trying to understand what is driving and moving the needle and scaling brand's growth. So I think fundamentally that's what this role is. And it's been great because I've been able to apply not only my media knowledge and understanding of media KPIs and metrics, but also leverage the understanding of onsite metrics to help fuel and facilitate the growth to you.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:28):

And in that role, with visibility to both in store and online, what are you seeing as the big changes in the industry or things you're really paying attention to right now?

AJ Patel (06:40):

Yeah, I think one of the shifts is obviously there's been a lot of changes with privacy, and it's becoming more and more difficult to target the correct consumer. It's almost like you have to throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. Sometimes that's the way that it feels. But the shift, I think, is really looking more holistically at growth. I think that previously everyone was just looking at ROAS and really the CPAs. And fundamentally, I think there's been a shift in media now to really look at some of the other KPIs which are being presented to you, especially things like thumbs stop rate is something which is really, really important.

(07:36):

We take a lot more value in looking at the CTR of our advertising too. We want to deliver a one plus percent CTR on any ad that we're delivering to a consumer. And I think also looking at customer acquisition cost holistically is really important too. Whereas previously it was very much channel siloed. Now it's important to look at your investment across meta, Google, TikTok, all of these different media channels to truly understand what is driving that cac. And from an MTA perspective, having the correct tools in place is really valuable for any brand. So utilizing the rocker box, triple whale north beams of the world to understand what is your first channel touchpoint and what is driving really the conversion, because you can't just look at the in platform KPIs anymore. I think that you have to take it with a grain of salt. There's over attribution in some channels. There's under attribution in others. And also, I mean, when you look at it from an omni perspective, looking at the impact that your media plays on Amazon and retail and other third party channels outside of even web is really important too.

Peter Crosby (08:54):

AJ, it might be just useful for our audience to just you give us your classic elevator pitch For you beauty, what is it about? What are your audiences? Where do you play? Might be helpful too.

AJ Patel (09:07):

Yeah. Yeah. So you, beauty is the luxury skincare brand. It was started almost five years ago now it's four and a half by Tina Craig and Katie Borgese. Katie has a background in skincare and has launched a number of brands. And Tina is well known for her Instagram bag snob blog, and other media activities. She's known as the influencers influencer. But the brand's key value proposition is this technology that was developed in Italy called Siren Capsule Technology. And it's really a different way of thinking about skincare, whereas traditionally, brands used to think about high level of actives and consumers too, I would say equals more effectiveness. We've actually developed the technology to where the capsule is being attracted or drawing in the problem areas of the skin. So you think about it kind of like your yard. You really don't want to target areas of healthy lawn when you're doing kind of, we weed killing activities. You're using the weed killer only on the areas where there's problems. Same thing fundamentally applies to the siren capsule technology. It's really, you're utilizing it across the entirety of your face with much lower level of actives versus traditional skincare, but it's truly only going to impact the areas where there are problems with the skin.

Peter Crosby (10:48):

Wow. I, I would imagine as the marketer, in addition to the salesperson figuring out how to communicate that value through all the different channels that you have since now the consumer is shopping everywhere and you talked about thumbs stop and things like that. I just love a little sense of your opportunity to be able to really tell that story efficiently, or is it you thumbs stop them with something that then allows you the opportunity to tell that story? Because a fascinating and complex way of thinking about your skincare, I would imagine.

AJ Patel (11:29):

Yeah, yeah. Really, I think it's an evolving kind of piece of content that we're developing to really truly better tell that story. It is a complex story and your traditional consumer isn't immediately going to understand that, but we utilize different kind of ideas to explain the concept to the consumer, whether that be utilizing a magnet to kind of explain how it attracts the free radicals and problem areas within your skin to the siren capsule. But there's just so many different ways, and I think UGC is also super important for us to really explain them. And we're also always testing more longer form content too. I think that's definitely an area where there's an opportunity to further explain the product to the consumer too.

Peter Crosby (12:28):

And from your role, you own both the direct to consumer and the Amazon side of the business. How do you balance those channels? How do you think about them in relation to one another? How do you sort of drive towards the omnichannel success and the cross where you sort of own your story, where your story is more influenced? I think it's a fascinating thing to try to balance all of that, I have to imagine.

AJ Patel (12:56):

Yeah, no, definitely. And I think looking at, like I said, media holistically and looking at the impact that it has on your Amazon business is super important. I think that oftentimes brands get lost in the fact that their TTC sales may not be going up as quickly as their media investment, but fundamentally, Amazon is now, or in 2025, it's poised to be the largest marketplace for beauty. So from that perspective, it really is an area which you need to play. And we do look at overlap with DTC and Amazon audiences through a MC to truly understand what level of acquisition we're driving holistically. So I think from that perspective, it is not just looking at the growth of Amazon and the growth of.com and silo. The person in my position really has to look at that and say, is the true media strategy or driving growth across all parts?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (14:05):

And as a luxury beauty brand, what do you see as the difference between someone who buys on Amazon versus buying on the direct consumer site? Is there a very stark difference between the kind of consumer you're targeting?

AJ Patel (14:18):

I think they're pretty similar. I think fundamentally, Amazon at this point has really figured out operations. They have Prime, and that's really an incentive for consumers to purchase on Amazon. It's easy purchase, easy returns, and they've built a lot of trust with the consumer. So a lot of our customer base being more affluent utilize as prime and utilize as Amazon on a regular cadence. We just want to be where that consumer is. In terms of demographic profiles, there's not a huge difference between the Amazon consumer and our.com consumer. I mean, they're still fitting very similar demographic profiles, but I think that there is some level of difference around what the consumer finds as a key value proposition. We don't typically offer very much in terms of discounts or gws or anything on Amazon. So that consumer is really, really purchasing the product either because they're a prime member and they want to have the ease of access of the product and immediate kind of shipment to their home. Or fundamentally, they don't really care about price and they're not super price sensitive. So I think that that's kind of a little bit of a difference between the two

Peter Crosby (15:53):

And AJ these days. There was a, I don't know if it was a golden moment, I was about to say that, but I'm not sure. But certainly there was a time in indeed to see where growth at all costs, spend, spend, spend, just get 'em in the door. And it was all about acquisition. And I wonder for your profitability to be achieved, is it in your interest to try and get your consumers over to D two C or do you think about it in that way or you managing towards that? And also I would imagine a customer's lifetime value becomes very important to you when you want to. And is this true that acquisition is one thing, but now there's a greater focus on loyalty to help achieve that more profitable customer? Is any of that making any sense? And

AJ Patel (16:43):

How do you think about it? Yeah, I think profitability now for any.com or any new business is paramount, right? Money is getting more expensive with interest rates going up, and I know they're coming down a little bit, but it's still very expensive for any new brand to get cash. And so when we look@the.com business and Amazon business, yes, we would love for all of our consumers to come through DTC, and we do try to drive more of business through.com. So wherever there's an opportunity to drive a consumer to our.com versus Amazon, we'll definitely do that.

(17:31):

And we want to control the message. I think that's another difference between.com and Amazon. We're able to directly communicate with the consumer via email, sms, et cetera. But fundamentally, I think profitability, any business which is not focused on that is not necessarily poised for success in the long term. Because at the end of the day, PEs and acquiring brands are really looking for profitability. And it's truly, I mean, I think at the end of the day, a sign of a healthy business without it, I mean, if you are showing super strong top line growth, but no profitability, the fundamentals of your business don't make sense. Haven't

Peter Crosby (18:22):

Been proven. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

AJ Patel (18:25):

And

Lauren Livak Gilbert (18:26):

AJ, you mentioned A MC and you come from an analytic background, and I'm sure data is a huge driver to inform everything that you do. Can you talk a little bit about how you're creating different customer cohorts and specific strategies around your Amazon and D two C channels based on either your first party data or the data that you're getting from Amazon?

AJ Patel (18:47):

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I think we've developed various different personas and there's various different messaging that resonates with each different type of persona that we try to target. Whether that be more of an affluent consumer who's going to purchase the full regimen of you beauty, or maybe it's a different persona for a high low consumer, and each one of those consumers is going to really different types of messaging is going to resonate differently for each one of those consumers. And I think that what we found is that we have to really tailor and personalize the content and even the acquisition strategy for each different type of persona. So for example, we sell some products which are sub a hundred dollars. Those products are great entry points for the high low consumer, whereas for our more affluent consumer, we can immediately sell them our $228 resurfacing compound, and that's going to resonate with them, and they're not going to bat an eyelet at spending that much.

(19:57):

So I think from an acquisition perspective, we've grown our product assortment a little bit. I mean, it's still not huge compared to other brands. I think we have around probably 15 different core skews, but each one of those provides a different opportunity and a different type of consumer is attracted to each one of those products. So we definitely do persona mapping and we look at what's resonating in terms of content types across the different audiences too. In terms of looking at third party demographics. We do that quite frequently and tie those demographics back to the individual customer order so we can build out further understanding of what's truly driving growth within a particular cohort of consumers. And then from an A MC perspective, we've done a ton of work looking at the overlap of the consumer base and looking at the profile of that Amazon consumer versus our.com consumer, and really refining the messaging that we're putting forward with the various different consumers. And we're testing Amazon TV and things like that now too, and seeing how that kind of resonates. I think previously a lot of the focus of all of these DTC brands was meta. Unfortunately, the time of low CPAs and low Cs is purely being driven by meta is a thing of a past, and brands really need to look at alternative channels and diversifying their media mix a little bit more.

Peter Crosby (21:49):

Gosh, the complexity of it is fascinating and scary to me. When I think of the amount of analysis that you must have to do at a high rate of speed to be able to take advantage of those opportunities, test and learn, it must just be a constant, I dunno, do you have to think of it as a fun game to make it? What are the kinds of people that you need to have around you that can play with that combination of creativity and empathy, but also really strict view of the numbers? What are the skill sets that you're hiring to be able to be that agile and aggressive?

AJ Patel (22:38):

Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, obviously coming from the analytics background, any of my team members that joins the team really has to have a core understanding of analytics and really be willing to test. I think testing is super undervalued, and a lot of brands think that they know what the consumer wants, but truly they don't. And they kind of restrict themselves by not doing testing and learning from those tests. And so we have a media buying team, and listen, I've a fantastic team here at ube, which I think is probably one of the best in the business, and I love working with them each and every day, whether that be the creative team who is producing some of this content and assets, or if it's the media buying team who's iterating on all of these tests that we're running on a regular cadence, or even the analytics team who's really understanding truly what is driving and fueling the growth of a business. I think that each one of the teams at UBE has a really important piece to driving and facilitating the growth that we've seen.

Peter Crosby (24:00):

So I'd love to close out without you obviously exposing any secrets that you aren't willing to share with the world, but so much of what you're talking about is finding new ways to interact with the consumer to get their attention, to educate them to have fun, I would imagine. What are some of the experiences that you are creating that are driving new opportunities for growth?

AJ Patel (24:29):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that we're always willing to test into new channels, and I think that there's fundamentally a first mover advantage sometimes, which is underappreciated. And so obviously we want to make sure that it's brand right and brand fit, but we will always look at new channels and tactics and look at what other brands are doing in the space. And we have a really good relationship with a lot of other partners in the space, and influencers is definitely a channel that we've seen some success with. Obviously Tina being an influencer herself, herself, we had the product collaboration with Tinks recently, which was super impactful and drove a ton of awareness for us. But I think it is testing and learning is really, I guess the name of a game at this point, and really iterating and scaling where we see these pockets of opportunity as we're looking at the data after a test and learn.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (25:47):

So AJ, can you talk a little bit about the activation with Tinks? What did you do? Was it like, and I had to Google who that was also after our initial chat, so I'm going to age myself here, but can you talk a bit about, was it a product activation? Was it an unboxing, and what do you think it drove for your consumers?

AJ Patel (26:08):

Yeah, yeah. So Tanks is an influencer. She has a super large presence on TikTok and Instagram, and she has super engaged audience. So we partnered with her on creating a new lip tint. So we have a plasma lip compound, which is a skincare treatment first and foremost, but we have different shades that we've developed over time. And so we collaborated with her on creating her own personalized skin tint with that product. And we did really kind of an omnichannel approach with that. So we did not just met ads, we also did activations in person. We had a really great press event. We had really great press coming broadly from media publications, and obviously she herself was promoting the product on Instagram. I think that that really helped fuel and facilitate awareness for the brand as well as bottom line sales. So activations like that where you're going more narrow and deep or super valuable for any brand, I think that the days of just paying an influencer 10 to $15,000 for post is kind of dead because consumers can see the realness of,

Peter Crosby (27:42):

Or lack thereof

AJ Patel (27:45):

Over a sponsored post, and they're becoming less and less effective, and in fact, they're becoming more and more expensive for brands. So having these kind of narrow and deep partnerships is super valuable.

Peter Crosby (28:02):

And I would also imagine when you're careful with it, it's a way of pushing the edges of your brand that to your point, you were talking about the number of cohorts and personas that you have, you can probably edge those out, I would imagine, and discover ones or tap into some, even if you weren't intending to, that you then can add to your sort of arsenal of who you can target. Does that what some of these more ambitious programs can do?

AJ Patel (28:35):

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's new audiences that we're unlocking each and every time that we do any of these activations with influencers, and then we kind of see how we can scale and grow that cohort of consumers and make them more profitable from a lifetime value perspective by cross-selling complimentary products and understanding what resonates with that persona group. So yeah, I think that it's not just unlocking more of the same, it's unlocking new audiences is super important there too.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:17):

I think the piece that was interesting too is that you co-created the product with the influencer. I'm seeing a lot more of that. I've been hearing people call it the multiplayer dynamic of commerce where the consumer and or the target audience is being involved in the creation of the product. I think that's a really interesting approach because then it's not just coming from you as the brand, right? You have a trusted influencer advisor expert who's also participating in this, and then I think it makes the consumer feel like they're a part of the conversation because someone like them is involved in the creation of the product. Was that a part of the reason why you did that?

AJ Patel (30:02):

Yeah, no, definitely. And I think that just having her product on the name yes, resonated super well with her audience. She's so well known in the space and her authority really helped facilitate and drive sales for the brand.

Peter Crosby (30:28):

Well, AJ, we are so grateful that you joined us to walk us through the path that you've been on and just to, I am going to go back on my initial saying to close out, like to ask you one sort of last question, now that you've been at you beauty for a bit, how do you think about the battle of the brands between the Unilever's of the world and the big companies that can sort of move markets with their decisions and their things, and then the scrappiness and the ability to really target and innovate? Do you find you're able to combine some of the two, or do you feel like when you're battling it out, what world are you finding yourself more interested in at the, and how do you think about the differences between the two?

AJ Patel (31:31):

Yeah, no, obviously it was a big step for me from a CPG powerhouse in Unilever to a small scrappier brand, but I think that there's been a lot of learnings that I've applied from Unilever from a process standpoint in particular to you, beauty, just to get us a little bit more organized. And like I said, we have a really, really great team here who helps support that too. But I think I've really, really loved working and innovating and testing and moving quickly I think has been the biggest difference for me, where it used to take two months for a new channel to get launched. We can do that in a couple of days now, and having the agility of being a smaller brand, it's really been super exciting and learning a lot about what other brands are doing and testing and having that ability and being able to drive that impact, I think has been, for me, the most exciting thing about being part of this brand and being part of this journey and seeing that growth that we've seen versus having more of a stagnant and mature, I guess, growth mindset. Yeah.

Peter Crosby (33:20):

Well, I mean, just throughout this conversation, I can kind of tell that you're having a blast, which is, I'm sure it's stressful and oh my God, and all those, and overwhelming at times, but I can tell that it comes across that you just enjoy sort of figuring this out and being in this fight and with products that build consumer loyalty, that your consumer, it sounds like you love your consumer, and that's really, it's cool. That's a great journey.

AJ Patel (33:57):

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely.

Peter Crosby (34:00):

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. We really appreciate it.

AJ Patel (34:03):

Yeah, thank you for having me on. It's been a wonderful conversation.

Peter Crosby (34:08):

Thanks again to AJ for sharing his e-commerce adventures with us. For more on all things e-commerce, please stop by digitalshelfinstitute.org and become a member. Thanks for being part of our community.