Amazon's Julie Haleluk - Shoppable Connections Through Live & Video

Julie 0:55

Hi, I'm Julie Halleluk, and you are watching the CPG Guys Podcast.

PVSB 1:00

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast, set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Peter V. S. Bond and Sri Rajagopalan , explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.

Sri 1:21

Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys. And we're live at Ad Week in New York City, recording podcasts, amongst other things. I'm of course Sri, known in the trade as Papa Raj, co-founders of ThinkBlue Consulting, co-creator of the CPG Guys, father to pop stars Lara Raj from the band Katseye, who just performed on Saturday Night Live, ready now for the US tour after a very successful Europe tour. And our MAC Toyota and Kiss Nails Girl Rhea Raj, also a solo artist of Scientist Republic Records. I am joined today by my East Coast co-host and founder PVSB, who is fresh off his own visit to San Fran and Amazon unBoxed. Stay tuned for an episode coming soon from Amazon unBoxed, where he recorded live there. Peter, tell us about Amazon Unbox. How'd it go?

PVSB 2:05

How are you doing? I'm doing great, Sri. San Francisco was tremendous. Paul Codas kicked us off on stage, talked about what Amazon had delivered in the last year, and they were not resting on their laurels. They shared with us a lot of great announcements. The predominant one was the introduction of Amazon Ads Agent. It's a big successor to what was previously known as DSP, and it is full funnel, complete campaign management in one place. No longer will there be separate iterations, separate platforms. It's all unified. It's a big deal, Sri. I was so honored to be at Amazon Unbox this year. Ran into all our friends. You were sorely missed.

Sri 2:49

You know, Peter, I hate missing out on these, but you know, I was somewhere else actually doing a live podcast with Stebo Systems. To audience, if you're getting value from these conversations and following, we have three quick asks of you, as very humbly. First, subscribe to us, please, the CPG guys on whatever platform you're listening on right now. That easy, whether that's Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, or anywhere else you get your podcast. It's a subscriber follow button so you never have to miss out on this content.

PVSB 3:14

Actually, you know that we for Amazon, we talked about Amazon. You can find us in three places on Amazon. Go ahead. You can find us on Alexa, you can find us on Amazon Music, and you can find us on Audible. All three of those, all Amazon platforms, all carry the CPC guys.

Sri 3:30

Follow them wherever. Second, leave us a rating. Takes a few seconds, makes an enormous difference in helping other CPG and retail media professionals find us. We build this community one listener at a time. A five-star rating is the single best way you can help us keep growing this community for your benefit too. Thirdly, follow us on LinkedIn between episodes we're publishing. Thought leaderships, industry analysis, content you won't find anywhere else, all built for the CPG and retail community you're already a part of. So CPG guys on LinkedIn and hit follow or click the link in the digital show notes at the end of the day. Just three quick requests. Subscribe, rate, follow. This will bring you more of the conversations that matter. Now to our guest. Listen, we're talking about the absolute center of gravity in commerce media today where social discovery meets the checkout button. If you're a brand still creating social media and retail media as two separate budgets, you're leaving real money on the table. Consumers don't shop in channel silos, so why are brands still marketing in them? To help us break down how to connect creative storytelling directly to lower funnel sales. We have a special guest joining us straight off the stage at Ad Week, joined by major CPG powers like Ollie and PadIQ, as well as top agency partners like WPP Media. A guest is leading the charge on how brands are moving beyond traditional ads to build real shoppable connections to Amazon Live and Amazon's shopping video. Welcome to the CPG Guys, Julie Helllook, head of growth for Amazon Live. Julie, this is a busy week at AdWeek. Thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you on the CPG Guys.

Julie 4:59

Thanks for having me. I love the opportunity to be here.

Sri 5:02

Awesome. To our audience, please check out the digital show notes of this episode to find a hyperlink to Julie's LinkedIn profile, to the Amazon Live website to learn more as we carry on with this conversation, which I get the pleasure kicking off with the first question, and I call it breaking down silos. In your talk, you emphasize that marketing strategies are still planned in silos, but customers don't shop that way, obviously. How can traditional CPG organizations break down the internal walls between retail media, social shopping, and brand teams to build one unified strategy that makes sense for the customer?

Julie 5:35

Yeah, it's so interesting because the customer journey, to your point, is cohesive. The customers discovering on social, they're discovering on Amazon, and they're jumping back and forth. And influencers, creators play an enormous role in that journey. More than half of shoppers have been influenced to buy something from a creator. 94% of the shoppers that have been influenced have made a purchase on Amazon, almost two and a half times more likely to shop on Amazon than anywhere else. And to your point, those two pieces, social and retail media, are planned quite separately today. And that's everything from the campaign strategy to the content and how we think about all the pieces. So ultimately, the best advice that I would give is thinking about it all cohesively. What is that brand objective and story that we want to tell? How do you think about the right talent to put it together with the right message? And how do you tell that in an authentic way across the various platforms? So it comes through naturally, and you can talk to the customer, not necessarily at them.

PVSB 6:39

Julie, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, I think about my transition into doing commerce on social media. It's exactly as you described it. I would see a creator or I would see something advertised. And my first reaction was I would toggle over to Amazon and search for it and then conduct it there because it was a safer, more familiar platform for me to do that. Let's talk a little bit about the measurement side of things. If I think about traditional social media tended to focus on engagement metrics like likes and views, right? While retail media traditionally focused on the immediate row as associated with a particularly sponsored product search and what have you. When connecting social storytelling to actual shoppable moments via Amazon shopping video, how should consumer packaged goods brands reframe their KPI frameworks?

Julie 7:26

It's a great question. So the first advice that I would give would be thinking about how the shoppable content is meant to manifest and what is what you're trying to achieve in terms of which KPI to look at. So there are certain KPIs to look at if you're looking at optimizing the content, for example, for performance and engagement, how it's really resonating with the audience based on the specific placement. So for example, Amazon live content can be placed onto a brand store. So is that helping the brand store on Amazon? And our analysis can show that it helps drive revenue, add-to-card, et cetera. That's going to be a very different set of metrics from if you're looking at the performance of a clip, for example, that you placed on social or something static, et cetera, that you might use in a DSP ad. The other piece is which is quite different from shoppable video content, is that it's very additive to the campaign overall. And oftentimes when you think about traditionally how advertising is measured, it is by tactic. So if I'm looking at a traditional performance media campaign, to your point, what is the CTR? What's the ROAS? You know, what am I driving from an efficiency standpoint? I spend this, I get why, it's very direct. But video creates this added layer of storytelling that becomes an amplifier. So one of the advantages that we have at Amazon is we have something called Amazon Marketing Cloud, which enables us to look at the entire consumer journey within across the Amazon Canvas. So a customer that sees, call it a sponsored brand video, and then also sees an Amazon Live and continues on with their journey, well, whatever that might look like, what is the lift overall? So, you know, for customers that see both, how do they perform versus the customer that only saw the ad? So in each of these examples, it really depends on what you're trying to achieve. For the holistic view, that might be looking at my overarching investment. Should I be using video? How should I be using it? How should I think about it within my campaign, especially if I'm thinking about live and interactive content? If I'm looking at engagement likes, I'm looking at reviews, et cetera, that might be in terms of comparing one piece of content to another to understand how I should optimize. So it really depends. The KPIs depend on what you're trying to look at.

Sri 9:54

Exactly the answer we wanted to hear, Peter. The KPI should be exactly what you wanted to look at. A brand should determine what the outcome you're looking for.

PVSB 10:02

You cannot measure every campaign the exact same way with the exact same look back period or anything else. It all depends upon what you're trying to accomplish.

Julie 10:11

Yeah.

Sri 10:12

But I want to talk about the way advertising has still has legacy pieces to it. And one such thing is how brands are notoriously protective of their brand guidelines. But in discussions we have on the CPG guys earlier today, as well as we've heard you say it, prioritizing creative partnerships rooted in authenticity, especially with AI setting in, I don't think brands have a choice. Authentic creator content is going to matter so much over these strict scripts. How do you personally coach legacy brands to loosen the reins so creators can do what they need to to be authentic and drive to lower farmer?

Julie 10:49

It's an interesting construct because loosening the reins on a creator can actually be quite scary for a brand. And that makes, you know, that makes sense. The other piece is that legacy brands traditionally also like to go for the biggest names, which don't necessarily tie to the I call the low risk model. Yeah. Because they don't necessarily even tie to the results and the objective that they're trying to drive, right?

Sri 11:12

Impressions.

Julie 11:13

Exactly. Exactly. And then sometimes being frustrated when it doesn't match the actual objective they're trying to achieve. So from a coaching perspective, the first thing that we always like to coach to start with is the same thing as the KPIs. What is the objective of the campaign and working backward from that? You mentioned the discussion I was in earlier today. One of the examples that a fellow panelist was talking about from Ollie was that they traditionally speak to women and so they have female creators. They took a risk and took a male creator, and he started talking about how the male multivitamin go works in his life and when he he stressed how he might take that vitamin, et cetera. And it had a very surprising yet exciting lift on Nuda Brand.

Sri 11:55

I can totally see that.

Julie 11:57

And but it was a surprise.

Sri 11:58

If I would have watched that ad, I'd have been curious to add that to my card.

Julie 12:02

Exactly.

Sri 12:03

And test it out for 30 years.

Julie 12:04

But you might not be the traditional audience, right? That that the advertiser would think or the brand manager may think about, right? And that is a risk. But it's a risk that pays off. So it's it really becomes calculated risk. Utilizing the data to think about who can authentically speak about your product.

Sri 12:21

I like to somewhat programmatic?

Julie 12:23

It's an interesting question because the authenticity piece, I think we can get to a point of programmatic creator selection.

Sri 12:33

That's what I meant. Yeah.

Julie 12:34

Over time.

Sri 12:35

That's why you have this job and I don't.

Julie 12:38

So it's a today versus tomorrow, and I I'm excited to keep going in that direction, right? But it really stems down to little by little. And it's funny because customer behavior continues to move in this direction. And it just creates so many opportunities for us to innovate for customers and for brands in terms of the types of solutions that we can offer.

Sri 12:59

In your discussions with brands, do you find brand teams, CMOs, marketers, VP of marketing, no matter what that title is, curious to want to learn more about that world versus hanging on to brand guidelines?

Julie 13:12

I would say that's the majority of my conversations.

Sri 13:14

That's great to hear.

Julie 13:15

And I was just talking about this. I'm really actually genuinely excited about this because I feel like in the last couple of years, some of the conversation was why should I do this and why do I think about this? And now the conversation has moved to how and help me understand how to be successful and I see all these trends. How do I make it work for me? How do I make it work for me when we're not organized in that way? How do I make it work for me when maybe some people internally are not, you know, don't understand they might not be ready? That's a great way to say it. How do I think about how to make it real for our customers? Because our customers are doing all these pieces. How do we pull them together? So for my team, we like to almost think of ourselves as consultants, which is so exciting because we're trying to help people to solve those problems. And it translates to real customer value. We're not trying to force messages down to the case.

Sri 14:11

I actually believe unless you play the role of that consultant as the platform leader and owner, brands will only go halfway. So it's a very important role you play. Over to you.

PVSB 14:21

See if you guys want to make a shout out to our friend and your former panelist from earlier today, Summer Jubileer, who, in addition to working for Ollie, is the co host of the Always Off Brand podcast, one of our favorites and one that we recommend. The little community we have. We got to give shout outs to each other.

Julie 14:39

She's amazing and she's fantastic out there.

PVSB 14:42

All right. So Julie. Is there anybody you don't know in the CPG industry? I think there are four or five people. They just started working last week, so I haven't met them yet. The operating worker. I will meet them. I will meet them. All right. Julie, how can a CPG brand take a single live stream or Amazon Live video and actually repurpose it full funnel so that the asset can even have impact on lower funnel product detail pages, Amazon ads, and even off Amazon touch points. How do you get more from the content you're creating?

Julie 15:15

So this is the, I think one of the secrets to how brands have found so much success utilizing live shopping on Amazon. So number one is that cohesive storytelling we've been talking about. Number two is that Amazon is a store. From my standpoint, we're not trying to be a social network. And so if that's the case, how do we think about how live shopping works the best on a store? So, first of all, the live is live, great, but then it continues to replay after the fact. So it enables customers, whenever and however they find the content, to keep watching it for the duration of however the long the brand owner enables it to stay. Now you have this long-form piece of content, which is an incredible infrastructure to create a whole flywheel of creative infrastructure. So you can clip sections for your product detail page, perhaps if it's a more educational video on how the product works or something that could help somebody make an informed purchase decision. You can clip something funny and more, you know, authentic to the creator and not necessarily specifically about the product, but where the product has a peak, right? And starting to get that message through, maybe that service is on social. You can use that same chute to create stills for DSP. All of that from one production that creates this whole flywheel of creative infrastructure that you can use everywhere. And that's how that cohesion comes to life.

Sri 16:42

Get it, Peter. The flywheel of creative infrastructure.

Julie 16:44

See, I I may or may not have used that on my own.

PVSB 16:46

See, my my problem is that whilst you were thinking of that, what I was thinking, we're here in New York, and she said clip, and I'm, you know, I'm a devotee of the Real Housewives of New York City. I was thinking of Dorinda Medley. Sorry. I know I'm a little I'm out there. Allison got me. She knows what I'm talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about. You do. I know what you just want to do.

Sri 17:05

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Julie 17:06

But my head did not go there.

Sri 17:08

But thank you. I watched an entire, to be declared, I watched an entire season of The Real Housewives, but it was Beverly Hills season one. There you go. Didn't miss a single episode. I know everybody would featured. I even know the restaurants that came out of that, the shops that opened up, the brands that got started.

PVSB 17:23

We and who did we meet this summer? Bozoma St. John. We met Bozoma. When we worked with her at Papsico years ago, I know it's a small world we operate in.

Sri 17:33

All right, a reminder to the audience that we're speaking with Julia Laluk, head of growth for Amazon Live. Let's get into inspiration because we are talking creators live over here. Shopping on Amazon has historically been intent-driven, search-heavy, like a lot of customer shoppers come in knowing what they want to buy or deeper in the search quest. How is social commerce transforming Amazon from a destination where consumers reorder, let's say like a toothpaste or a commodity, into a place where they can truly discover?

Julie 18:03

Yeah, it's a great question. So, you know, one of the things that our team has been focused on, which has been super interesting, is to think about where are the right places within the experience to surface this type of content. Where does the customer naturally want to see it? And it's really all about experimentation and understanding what customers want to see versus they don't. So a great example of that is what we call the thank you page. So after a customer makes a purchase, you make your purchase, and then you land on a page that's called the thank you page. Thank you for placing this order. What you'll notice now that I've pointed it out is most likely when after you make that purchase, you're gonna see the Amazon Live widget. And what we've learned is that after making a purchase, the customer completed one mission and now they're ready and excited for a complimentary mission. And so now they want to watch content, they might want to explore more, et cetera. And so little by little we think about each of these different types of places. We also have a fast channel on Prime Video. We think about all the ways and how content can show up, whether it's live content or shoppable video, which you can find all across the store to help customers discover and engage.

Sri 19:16

No surprise, whenever I want to search for something, my first hop is always Amazon. Great example today. I wanted Yankee sweatpants. Of course, I'm in Yankee land. And my travel sweatpants are dying, so I need a new one. What did I start with before going elsewhere? Amazon. Always.

Julie 19:32

Hot tip for travel. If you ever forget something, it's incredible how fast something can arrive at your hotel.

Sri 19:39

Well, LA these days I can get same.

PVSB 19:41

What did you do when you need it? Your daughter was going on tour, she'd lost her airport.

Sri 19:47

Okay, this is something new that I learned about. Literally, she she was at the Paris fashion show this week for Louis, the brand. And one hour before she was leaving for the airport, she called me and said, I lost my AirPods, but I don't want AirPods anymore. Because I'll lose a wired headset. I didn't even know USB C wired headset exists. And she said, I got 45 minutes, make it happen. Now, traditionally, I've gone to DoorDash to make it best buy. I said, Why don't I just look at Amazon? 29 minutes is what I was promised, 13 minutes is when I came home. Yeah, it's the hero.

Julie 20:22

That is a great dad win. I'm not just gonna do one, I'm gonna do three. And you got three backup headphones for the next one.

Sri 20:30

I switch from AirPods to USB-C myself.

Julie 20:34

That is amazing. That's a great dadwin.

PVSB 20:36

In your session today, when you're talking with Summer and Kyle at Ollie and PetIQ respectively, what are the common playbooks or creative strategies that brands that succeeded like they did that turn passive viewers into actual active buyers of their brands?

Julie 20:53

The number one thing that they both talked about is the two kind of big temples of what we've been talking about today: cohesive storytelling and taking the live and thinking about it as an asset generator across the board. Both brands, and they're very wildly different, right? OLLI is Vitamins and PetIQ, their product pet armor, they're they're thinking about flea and tick medication. They have to think about compliance and all sorts of things, very different worlds, but to how to find success is actually quite similar in terms of what they what they need to do. And in fact, going back to your earlier question for pet armor, it was a very similar point. They had to take some risks to get really comfortable with someone in front of the camera, and there's really nowhere to hide when it comes to life. So they needed to find that real trust in terms of somebody who could talk about you know the product, but as a pet lover.

Sri 21:45

Peter and I were hiding for the longest time because we have radio faces. That's why we did a podcast.

Julie 21:51

But now we've been exposed because everybody I mean, maybe we need to get you guys on an Amazon Live. We have a studio on 34th Street. Should we? I think we should give it a shot. I think it's time of faces. I I mean I could not agree anymore.

Sri 22:06

I want to just wrap up on the, you know, maybe I threw you off base there, but on the playbooks for those creative strategies to turn passive viewers into active buyers. What do you think about when someone sees an authentic creator on a live, the emotional piece of this that they can relate to?

Julie 22:25

That all comes down to the pairing, right?

Sri 22:28

So if that that means getting the right creator.

Julie 22:31

The right creator with the story that the brand is trying to tell. That there's no it's no magical, complicated secret. There's all sorts of things and playbooks we have in terms of duration of the content. How much to talk about a product if you're doing an explanation or an education versus something that's totally lean back. I mean, we've sent a whole crew on a cruise ship before to do, you know, uh The crew has never been happier. No doubt. Oh, I'm sure. It's a video format. You can do anything with it. And so there's going to be different playbooks based off of the different objectives. But when it comes to the playbook for success, it's really about finding talent that can comfortably speak about your brand. There's a lot of creators who can create great static content. There's a lot of creators who can create short form content that is pre-recorded and edited. It's an entirely different animal to be able to stand or not sit or whatever in front of a camera and to be able to talk about something for a long period of time, whether you're on your own or with someone else, right? So the talent is really the most important thing. And that doesn't have to be an influencer. That can be an expert. That can be really anyone.

Sri 23:47

probably is as important as an influencer.

Julie 23:50

Totally. That could also be, I mean, that can be a small business owner that's just talking about their brand story. A founder and how they invented something and why it's exciting. One of the things that I'm most excited about in terms of where we're going is we're spending so much time investing in tooling and making it easier so that anyone, you know, any brand can access Amazon Live and activate it within their full funnel campaigns. Really, our goal is to get out of the way. We want to be here to consult. We want to be here to help any brand, but we also just want to just want to help brands and customers connect.

Sri 24:26

And talking about full funnel campaigns, you are co-presenting with agency partners like WPP Media. What does that ideal operating model actually look like between a brand, its agency partner, Amazon's internal video and social commerce teams today? Like can you explain in very simple English?

Julie 24:45

There is no two similar workflows. The common ground is that it is all about flexibility. When it comes to new formats and new infrastructures and toolkits, it really is about flexibility. So my team will play a variety of different roles depending. No two client agency relationships the same.

PVSB 25:06

I want to talk to the brands that haven't invested in the capabilities that you've been advocating today. Really, when we look at Amazon's social commerce ecosystem, what should these CPG marketers start experimenting with right now to stop being behind the curve and actually elevate themselves to being ahead of the curve?

Julie 25:29

So my number one advice for those that are thinking about it and to get folks over the curve would be to stop overthinking it. It doesn't need to be that complicated. Most likely, those brands are already activating on social. Most likely, they're already have commerce and retail media strategies. Take what you're doing and pull it through and see what happens. Right. So you're already creating social content. See what happens when you connect that through and put it on your brand store and your PDP. It's little by little thinking about that connective tissue, and then you can experiment your way into it. It doesn't have to be a big lift to integrate it in your full funnel campaign.

PVSB 26:07

If you wait for the perfect situation, you're going to miss it because it's never going to happen. It's the enemy of progress.

Julie 26:14

Absolutely. And by the way, as soon as you do, you're most likely going to start seeing little by little impact and think looking at the measurement, going back to that from a full funnel perspective, and then taking those learnings and continuing to run.

Sri 26:28

No debate whatsoever. We're here at Ad Week, and we're lucky to have this conversation on digital creators as well as live content leading to lower funnel. So, Peter, what's your summary big takeaway from this conversation?

PVSB 26:41

Actually, it had to do with the repurposing of the content that you create as you're doing live or or streaming. That it's content that can be used up and down the funnel. And if you think about it as a sunk investment for one particular tactic, you're missing the ability of that to influence lower funnel, middle funnel, different types of campaigns, all of that is just content is universal and it can be applied in many different ways. And that will help you understand that while you're investing in this for this one particular effort, you're going to be able to reuse it in many different approaches.

Sri 27:18

Last night, Peter, before I hit the sack on that red-eye flight from LA, I was watching Gary V. And Gary V literally said what you he's been saying this for five years. It's not nothing new. So he copied what you said. I was trying to allude to that. Thank you. Yeah. And now remember, we don't have to hide because of our radio faces. I know. At some point, go into the Amazon live studio. I like it straight. That's right. But my takeaway, because I got influenced last night by that message, create it once minor tweaks across platforms, you're good to go. I also deeply believe in the authenticity of creator content. I think that's equally important. But your closing message, I think, triumphs everything. I'm not gonna say brands have to be bold. That's the word that came to my head. But what I'm gonna say is brands have to evolve. And I think that's what that's what you mentioned. You have to follow the customer, go advertise where the audience is. And if they're on social, creators automatically have a huge value if they're on live. I don't need to close that statement. Obviously, you should be on live. That's as easy as it gets. Julie, thank you for making time for us during a busy week at Ad Week to be on the CPG Guys. We enjoyed this.

Julie 28:32

Of course. Thank you for having me.

PVSB 28:33

And Julie, one of the things that uh all of our guests get after they leave is we give you a CPG Guys t-shirt. Now, do you know where we get our merch on demand CPG Guys t-shirt?

Sri 28:43

It should be an easy one.

Julie 28:43

That's it a place called Amazon.

PVSB 28:47

It is, it is. Amazon merch on demand. It is the official swag store of the CPG guys.

Julie 28:54

Oh, I love it. I love it. Thank you.

PVSB 28:56

Peter got us two hats today.

Julie 28:58

Very nice. I'll be part of the CPG guys crew. Proudly.

PVSB 29:01

And the great thing is five episodes, and you get a CPG guys leather and wool varsity jacket. It's like Saturday Night Live, but taken to the next level. How many have it so far? Four people? Four people, yeah.

Julie 29:12

Well, you guys better not forget about me.

PVSB 29:15

I think between that and the capsized tickets, I don't think you're gonna forget about us.

Sri 29:19

There we go.

Julie 29:20

There we go.

Sri 29:21

To our audience, if today's conversation sparked something for you, a new idea, a fresh perspective, just a reminder of why this industry is worth showing up for every day. Share it. Tag us, the CPG guys. Tell a colleague, the more voices we bring into this community, the sharper all of us get. To our followers on LinkedIn that trust us to inform, educate, and entertain you about our industry. Thank you for our trust and encouragement to our sponsors. We wouldn't be here without you. Thank you. Until next time, push this conversation forward. I'm Sri on behalf of my co-host PVSP. This is the CPG Guys Podcast. See you soon.