These are the people I follow to stay up to date in a 360-degree fashion of what is going on in our industry. Who else should I add?
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Happy Sunday!
If you’re reading this, I hope you’re ready for a quieter week going into the last week of the year. With that said, today’s newsletter is going to be a list of people I follow to stay up to date across different platforms (X, TikTok, LinkedIn) and keep my mind challenged. Get ready to follow some people and soak in knowledge on this slow week.
Vendor of the Week
Although BFCM is over, we’re still in the middle of Q5. After all, seasonal shopping extends through December and into early January after people receive their end-of-year bonuses and holiday cash.
I just read that two-thirds of consumers plan to shop the week after Christmas, so plenty of sales are still to be made. Anyone who reads my newsletter knows I am very bullish on TV as a channel for this “Q5” period and all of next year. However, historically, TV has not been nearly as effective a direct response channel as paid social media or paid search.
Yes, you could promote a custom QR code, discount, or URL on the TV screen, but viewers wouldn’t be able to click that ad, be redirected to your landing page, and make a purchase instantly like they could from paid search or paid social.
That changes now with Roku. Roku, the number-one streaming TV platform with over 80 million users, recently partnered with Shopify to allow Shopify merchants to create and launch what they call “Action Ads” within their new self-service ads manager. I made a five-minute video showing you how it all works.
In short, viewers can now click to buy directly from their Roku remote. Once they click, Roku sends them a text with a link to the landing page to checkout. As the brand, you have full control over the creative, SMS messaging, and URL with UTMs to track click-throughs and conversions, just like other digital channels. IMO, this completely changes how brands can market and sell with TV.
They also use AI upscaling to make your creative look incredibly sharp and crispy on the big screen.
While you’re on break, catch up on the latest Limited Supply podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. This past week’s episode dove deep into customer acquisition tactics and strategies for brands, large and small.
My Favorite Follows
Today’s newsletter is a list of people I recommend you follow for future knowledge or to go back and read their prior posts. I often find that practitioners and day-to-day operators are the ones with the best thoughts and vantage points for information and insights. I’ve always had the thought that instead of just reading the book, I want to know the author — hence why I love following these friends on the internet.
Is there anyone I should add? Reply to this email with who!
Ari Murray — Ari is my Chief Growth Officer at Sharma Brands and also constantly shares interesting marketing campaigns, examples, tactics and wins/losses under her belt. Her tone of voice also just makes it fun to learn.
Nick Shackelford & Aaron Nosbich — Nick and Aaron started BREZ, one of the fastest growing beverage companies today. They share all their revenues, profits, mistakes, and successes every month on X.
Cody Plofker — Cody is one of my closest friends in our industry and is the CEO of Jones Road Beauty. His tweets constantly challenge how to think about your business from a marketing, product, and operations standpoint.
Katie Welch — Katie is the CMO of Rare Beauty and one of the smartest brand builders in CPG. She also has a vantage point to speak from, that most don’t, giving even more unique insights to her audience.
Isaac Medeiros — Isaac started Mini Katana, a brand that produces over 500M view PER MONTH across social channels. He also started Kanpai Foods, a freeze-dried candy business also doing millions of views per month. He tweets constantly about how he’s arbitraging awareness in ways no one else is.
Mehtab Karta — Mehtab tweets about all the things no one else talks about: 3PLs, inventory planning, how to use agencies the right way, etc.
Preston Rutherford — Preston was the co-founder of Chubbies and Loop Returns. Now he started a company called Marathon, which helps measure the impact of brand marketing on a business (taking his learnings from Chubbies’ scale). His tweets do a great job of helping you see the power of brand building from a different vantage point.
Dara Denny — Dara is one of the best people to look to for creative strategy. I got to first know Dara when she was at Thesis Testing, a now-acquired performance marketing agency. Her wisdom on X and Instagram is worth keeping up with to stay in the know on platform updates or any sort of creative testing.
Adam Robinson — Adam started Retention dot com, and tweets a lot about outbound marketing, cold-emailing, and just gets me fired up when it comes to selling.
Fan Bi — Fan buys consumer brands. I haven’t met Fan yet, but his tweets are always full of nuggets to learn from.
CPG Wire — CPG Wire is one of the best sources for staying current on newly funded deals or M&A activity in CPG.
Kira Jackson — Kira is currently the CMO of Set Active and was formerly a VC at RX3 Ventures. Her expertise in brand marketing (we first met 7 years ago when she was in PR), capital allocation and sociology is so easily translated through her content.
Oddit — The Oddit X account has so much great inspo they tweet for conversion-optimized updates. If you never buy an Oddit report, you can still take note of the frameworks in their before & after images and apply them to your own site.
David Hermann — I’ve known David for almost 10 years now, and he is consistently a favorite follow. If it’s not a live-tweeting a police chase, David goes deep on customer acquisition, channel strategy, what bugs he’s seeing, what’s working, and what’s failing. He’s always a great gut-check when you feel like something is wrong.
Alex P — Alex constantly tweets about DTC strategies, where to find the next best video hook, and what makes a brand scalable.
Dan McCormick — Dan started Create (the creatine gummies) and builds the company in public. Similar to Aaron from BREZ, Dan shares his investor updates, company growth, challenges, and wins.
Drew Fallon — Drew worked at a skincare brand, Mad Rabbit, and now is the CEO of Iris (a fintech tool for brands). My favorite tweets from Drew are his breakdowns of earnings reports or seeing his POV challenging what everyone wants to talk about (i.e. 90-day credit cards, raising debt, etc).
Savannah Sanchez — Savannah is a creative strategist and produces a ton of ads herself. She is always sharing ads that are winning for her clients on her X profile.
Jeremiah Prummer — Jeremiah is the CEO of KnoCommerce, a survey tool (but really, a data company). He constantly shares insights from what he sees, such as AppLovin’s growth in consumer buying decisions.
Olivia Kory — Olivia works at Haus, an incrementality testing tool. She previously worked at Sonos, Netflix, and more on their growth marketing and measurement, and is a wealth of knowledge for anyone advertising and selling in multiple places.
Sean Frank — Wallet salesman by day and contrarian by night on X. Sean tweets what comes to mind, giving a transparent view into how the CEO of a $100M brand thinks about new channels, cost-cutting, efficiencies, etc.
Zach Stuck — Zach founded a holding company of brands that will do close to $100M next year in revenue. He shares many of his wins on X or on podcasts, like his Marketing Operators episode. I highly recommend following Zach!
Kendall Dickieson — Kendall helps brands run social media in a savvy / cutting-through-the-noise way and often has golden nuggets on her X feed.
Ryan Babenzien — Ryan has the most straightforward, honest thoughts and hot takes on LinkedIn. He will call our vendors for not paying him on time, channels that waste ad dollars, or practices that he believes are antiquated and overrated.
Maggie Sellers — Maggie used to work in-house as a brand marketer and is now an active angel investor and advisor to CPG brands. Her TikTok accounts help me stay in the trenches of what is new and hot in consumer.
Eye for Retail — This account is anon, but it’s a former retail executive who tweets his ongoing aberrations, predictions, and thoughts of how to be better in retail.
Dylan Ander — Dylan has one of my favorite tweet series’ ever — he tweets a CRO hack every day, and they’re always so actionable.
Greg Isenberg — great for inspiration on building no-code solutions or really building anything to make your life and business more convenient.
Jesse Pujji — Jesse started and sold one of the largest early Facebook ad agencies, Ampush. Now, he tweets a bunch about optimizing your operations as a startup.
Harry & Good Marketing — Harry started Marketing Examples, where he takes the best ads, copywriting, emails, and more and shares them with the world to learn from or get inspired.
Dianna Cohen — Dianna is another incredible brand builder and the founder of Crown Affair. On TikTok, she shares the behind-the-scenes of investor meetings, merchandising SEPHORA launches, and how she navigates the founder life.
That's all for this week
This is a shorter than usual email for this week because many of you are on vacation or taking a slower week. That said, I know there are tons of golden nuggets within their content — you have to find them!
I hope you have a fabulous upcoming holiday break celebrating with friends and loved ones. As we wrap the year, I’m so grateful to end 2024 with the people I have in my life — my family, my friends, my girlfriend, my team at Sharma Brands, and everyone I’ve come across this year. I can’t wait to see what happens in 2025 and to look back on the year 12 months from now, to see how far we have come.
