CMOS

Tale as old as time: Woman at big retail brand exits for small DTC upstart

This just in: Heidianne Pillsbury, an eight-year veteran of Sephora’s marketing team, is jumping ship (no pun intended) to become CMO of beauty upstart Three Ships. 

• In some ways, she’s now a statistic, joining 2021’s so-called “Great Resignation” that’s seen a whopping 63% of marketers plan a job or career change. 
• “Certain marketers are realizing, ‘Hey, this isn't where I want to be,’” Pillsbury told Marketing Brew. “There's now a lot of opportunity out there for them to find their fit and what's right for them.”

Whomst? Over the past eight years, Pillsbury worked her way up at Sephora, most recently serving as a senior director of marketing for its branded cosmetics. 

Fun fact: Pillsbury told us she was Sephora CMO Deborah Yeh’s first hire at the beauty brand, as the two knew each other from their Gap Inc. days; Pillsbury was a media manager at Banana Republic, while Yeh headed up marketing strategy and brand management at Old Navy. 

But after climbing the ladder of what became a household name, Pillsbury is excited to work at a company still in its early stages. She’s been yearning for a fast-paced environment, as well as the freedom that comes with working at a nine-person company rather than one with 700 employees. 

Live fast 

“There are fewer people to make approvals, so you have the ability to take some calculated risks,” Pillsbury told us. For example, she wants Three Ships to be first in line for up-and-coming platforms (she sees TikTok as “table stakes” for the brand and wants to keep an eye out for newer platforms with less obvious opportunities) as well as take part in unexpected collaborations. 

• Three Ships started as a DTC skincare company in 2017, but it’s rapidly expanding—Pillsbury told us that while other beauty brands hopped on the struggle bus in lockdown, Three Ships landed on shelves at Whole Foods and Target. 
• She thinks the company’s success came, in part, from its emphasis on sustainability and transparency regarding ingredients (case in point: its detailed, easy-to-read digital ingredient glossary), as both coincide with trends she’s seen in the beauty industry. 

Pillsbury is setting sail as CMO of Three Ships with one word in mind: innovation. Her drive to experiment stems from her early career experience at Condé Nast, where she worked in ad sales for Lucky magazine during the early aughts. There, she learned what not to do as a brand in the 21st century. 

“I got great training at Condé Nast, but I saw them getting honestly closed in by so much technology,” she said, explaining that the company wasn’t exactly an early adopter. “They just didn't believe that the digital age was going to take over.”—PB

DATA

Targeted advertising is missing its

How well does targeted advertising work? We already know what audiences are giving up (personal info) in exchange for “relevant ads,” as the industry likes to say, but what are we getting in return? 

A study by Adalytics, a browser extension that tracks and analyzes which ads a person sees, asks that question, and the answers are mixed. 

• For the study, researcher Krzysztof Franaszek tracked the browsing behavior of 25 volunteers over roughly two weeks. At the end, some were given surveys to gauge whether the ads served to them were relevant. 
• Insights were pulled from an ad’s clickthrough URL, which often shows details around *why* someone’s being targeted, like their assumed gender or whether they’re travel-curious.
• Although the sample size wasn’t large enough to establish definitive claims, the results illustrate the pitfalls of targeted marketing—and the potentially dubious data marketers rely on.

Case in point: 90.5% of ads for shoe company Merino were targeted to the wrong gender, meaning men were seeing ads for women’s shoes and vice versa, the study found. And the National Rifle Association “repeatedly” served ads to two people it deemed “luxury vehicle enthusiasts,” even though neither said they had any interest in such cars (or in firearms).

Another user was served an ad for mattress brand Saatva that identified the user as “middle-of-the-funnel” for having searched the brand, even though the user had only searched the brand because they were given a hand-me-down mattress and wanted to check the dimensions.

The targeting data often comes from data brokers like LiveRamp or Epsilon, but because of the widespread use of third-party cookies, there’s a ton of junk out there that might be mislabeled or incorrect.   

As Franaszek told Marketing Brew, “if you’re spending 400 million dollars, you don’t want $200 million being spent” on low-quality data.

Click here to read about other takeaways from the study.—RB

SPONSORED BY TRUFAN

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And the way Trufan produced a holistic audience analysis of the barbecue industry by analyzing cultural trends, nuances, and behavior—ultimately resulting in high-quality, actionable marketing insights—it's just another day at the office for them.

Trufan has crafted comprehensive audience reports for marketers in all sorts of industries, including gaming, basketball, cosmetics, and yes, chubby piggies. So it’s safe to say that no matter what industry you work in, Trufan’s platform can help you know your audience and speak to them powerfully.

Uncover trends. Discover unknown and unexpected crossovers (did you know gamers love wine?). Get started with Trufan by checking out all their audience reports here.

CAMPAIGNS

Swim up bar, meet swim up billboard

Remember the billboard that gave out free beer? This is him now. Feel old yet?

In all seriousness, a swimmable billboard created by Adidas recently garnered a wave of press coverage (see what we did there?) Here’s the story, as told by the media outlets in question.

Ad Age: “Women were invited to swim in a billboard last month at one of Dubai's most popular beaches, in an outdoor stunt for Adidas,” Ad Age reported, noting that Havas Middle East and Jack Morton Worldwide worked together on the project, which promoted the brand’s inclusive swimwear—specifically its Burkini Collection. 

The Drum: This pub informed readers that 1) the swimming pool billboard’s water could fill 163 bathtubs and 2) the team only had three weeks to take it “from concept to final production.”

Muse by Clio: The stunt was created to attract influencers and members of the media. “Influencers, brand ambassadors and the media were invited to swim first,” Maria Tsangarakis wrote.

Bottom line: Marketing Brew spoke with former Publicis Chief Growth Officer Rishad Tobaccowala about the stunt. In his opinion, the stunt was “absolutely” executed for the sake of press coverage and influencer attention. “Increasingly, the focus is two kinds of PR. One is press (offline and online), the second is social. The two are intertwined with press reporting on things that go viral on social—every marketing program is seen through Instagram,” he told us.—PB

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Yelp is rolling out an advertising platform to help brands reach its users outside its app and website.  
• Apple has reportedly expressed interest in purchasing indie film studio A24.
• Instagram is adding a Security Checkup feature to combat hacking.
• Lululemon’s Mirror tapped Known as its first agency of record.

SPONSORED BY MORNING CONSULT

Now is a pivotal moment for the travel biz. Covid dealt the industry a curveball—but now there’s an opportunity to knock it out of the park. This report from Morning Consult details how businesses from hotels to airlines can get it right this summer, as folks travel their tails off after being cooped up for...awhile. Get the key insights to clinching consumer trust here. 

FRENCH PRESS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren't those.

Content: Your guide to creating evergreen content lives here. 

Reels: Instagram’s TikTok clone has its own algorithm—check out these tips for making Reels work for you. 

Mobile: If you’re updating your brand’s mobile landing page (or have a hunch that you should be), check out these five examples for inspiration.  

Strategy: Looking to succeed in the B2B Marketing thing? On July 20 at 2pm ET, Salesforce and nCino CMO Jonathan Rowe will discuss the top five strategies for delivering differentiated customer experiences and driving growth. Register here.*

METRICS AND MEDIA

Stat: Pathmatics estimates that Ted Cruz has spent $449,000 on Facebook advertising this year, while simultaneously vowing to fight big tech, Digiday reports. 

Quote: “If we are entertaining people, they would write stories about us and we don’t have to spend on advertising which would reduce the price of our cars.”—Elon Musk on his sense of humor, per Bloomberg.

Read: Nitish Pahwa’s “How the Heck Is Peloton the Best-Paying Music Streaming Service?” for Slate and Joseph Cox’s Vice piece on why mobile “unique IDs” don’t remain anonymous.

FROM THE CREW

Curious about Morning Brew’s growth strategy?

Listen to our cofounder Alex Lieberman break down the tactics used to Grow From 0 to 2.5 million on his podcast, Founder’s Journal. He shares Morning Brew’s playbook for growth, with never-before-shared insights, including details about our ambassador program, referral program, and paid acquisition. Listen to Founder’s Journal here.

ICYMI

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Seeing the same streaming ads over and over? There’s a fix for that
• David’s Bridal fell in love with digital marketing during lockdown
• Despite missing Olympics, Sha’Carri Richardson could still attract marketers