Month: April 2019

Blockstack is proposing an unprecedented initial coin offering under an SEC rule that would allow it to sell shares to small investors.

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Maja Milicevic, co-founder and principal at Sparrow Advisers. On Sunday Publicis Groupe announced it is buying data provider Epsilon in a $4.4 billion deal. It identified two main considerations that… Continue reading »

The post Publicis And Epsilon: An Acquisition Of Legacies? appeared first on AdExchanger.

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is written by Lindsey Harju, co-founder at Blinc Digital Group. Advanced TV has experienced an explosion of change over the last couple of years, largely driven by consumer behavior shifts like the introduction of eSports. In eSports,… Continue reading »

The post As ESports Viewership Soars, TV Leaders Must Get Off The Sidelines appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Let The Games Begin? There are only nine years until the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Better start planning. NBCUniversal is, at least. NBCU, which has been producing Olympics broadcasts for 30 years, has a unique marketing twist in 2028. The International Olympic… Continue reading »

The post NBCU Consolidates 2028 Olympics Sales Channel; Ad Tech Market Stability In Question appeared first on AdExchanger.

Last summer, the question of what agency groups will do with data — own it, or rent it — had left Publicis on the back foot. Comments made by the holding company’s leadership post-GDPR indicated the company had no intention of owning its own data.

That was strange, considering that there is a race for “identity” underway in digital advertising that is being accelerated by privacy acts and the GDPR. That race was escalated in the agency realm when IPG acquired Acxiom Marketing Solutions last year for $2 billion, making clear it felt that first-party data ownership was a way for the agency group to shore up its business and its margins.

But Publicis’ $4.4 billion acquisition of Epsilon signals a change of tack. With Epsilon, the French holding group is getting first and third-party data it can sell, via its own consumer data arm.

And with Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital shopping for a first-party data company and WPP remaining a strong proponent of data ownership, it feels like the major holding companies are now largely on the same page.

So, the question now is whether agencies are prepared to face tough questions about neutrality, and whether they’re selling data to clients because it’s in their clients’ best interests, or the interests of agencies’ bottom lines.

This is exactly what Publicis argued last year around IPG-Acxiom. Publicis Media CEO Steve King had said that Publicis “believes in the power of choice,” and would leave dirty data work to everyone else. “We decided not to own that data. We believe that’s the best interest in our clients, and our focus is on helping our clients grow, but for our sector I think it’s probably a positive thing that IPG has the confidence to make this bold acquisition,” King had said in July.

What a difference a few months makes. — Shareen Pathak

Disney’s best bet is not selling its SVOD, but selling Disney
A lot of attention is going to Disney+ — and rightfully so — as the media giant hopes to build a significant direct-to-consumer streaming video business. And Disney is not meek with its ambitions, targeting 60 million to 90 million global paying subscribers by 2024. Without a doubt, that’s an ambitious target, but it’s important to remember that, for Disney, the ultimate goal is not in selling a subscription video service, but Disney as a brand.

Based on conversations with industry insiders, many expect Disney to bundle Disney+ with other parts of its business. For instance, offering Disney+ for free for a year to those that buy Disney theme park tickets or go on a Disney cruise can go a long way toward building a giant subscriber base. And at $7 per month, the service is also cheap enough where most subscribers (especially families) won’t churn out once those promotional offers end — not when the Disney+ catalog has pretty much every Marvel, Pixar and Disney movie, plus original series and other licensed TV programming.

This doesn’t even account for the possibility of bundling Disney+ with Hulu and ESPN+, something which Disney executives acknowledged last week during their Investor Day. The company did not disclose how those bundles would work, but Disney has the capacity to create a valuable bundle across those three services, covering everything from blockbuster movies to live sports.

Disney+ will be core to Disney’s future. But Disney’s future — just like its business — is much more than getting customers to pay for content; it’s getting customers to pay for Disney, in a variety of different ways. — Sahil Patel

The post The Rundown: Agencies get their hands dirty with data ownership appeared first on Digiday.

If Apple wants to be in the services business, it has to build out teams that can draw new users to those products. The company is looking to hire accordingly.

This past week, Apple posted a number of job postings on LinkedIn for roles designed to help acquire audiences for Apple News and Apple News+: a growth marketing manager; a senior publisher partnerships manager; and a social media manager. Overall, the company is looking to hire as many as 22 people to beef up the staff supporting Apple News.

The listings, some of which Apple has been trying to fill for a while, would give Apple resources to forge strategic marketing partnerships with platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat; a point person to lead collaborative marketing campaigns with publishers participating in Apple News; and a leader who can work across Apple’s marketing, product, engineering, data analytics, design and business development teams.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

To date, Apple has exerted little effort marketing Apple News — preinstalling the app on hundreds of millions of Apple devices was promotion enough — and consequently, Apple News has a limited presence on platforms. Aside from an active Twitter account with nearly a quarter million followers, Apple News does not use any other platforms to disseminate information or content.

For most of last year, Apple News’s audience was essentially flat: The service’s monthly audience ranged between 60 million and 63 million monthly unique users, from January 2018 to January 2019, according to Comscore data. That’s still a healthy base of users it can try and convert into paying Apple News+ customers, which Apple launched in March. To jumpstart user growth, Apple will go hunting in the same walled gardens as every other publisher.

Though platforms prefer to promote content that keeps its users inside their respective walled gardens, many publishers have found success treating them as sources of referral traffic. Lifestyle publishers, in particular, have watched Instagram Stories evolve into a dependable source.

Building a robust organic audience for Apple News on social platforms could also make them more cost-effective performance marketing channels.

While publishers remain wary of Apple News+, monetization inside the free, ad-supported side of Apple News remains frustrating. Many have simply given up on trying to monetize directly. Among the job listings Apple posted were several including an advertising manager for Apple News and a data scientist for its Apple’s ads platform, that hinted at Apple hoping to improve that side of Apple News.

“They need to fix the monetization,” one audience development executive said, “or publishers are going to start dropping out.”

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As reports emerged of the fire at Notre Dame cathedral, CNN’s social discovery team turned to Snapchat to see what photos and videos they could find from the scene as it unfolded. On Monday, CNN’s Snapchat edition featured 16 videos showing different perspectives of the fire at Notre Dame. The team also added text and graphics to describe the scene, such as the fact the cathedral draws 13 million visitors a year.

“What was so key for Notre Dame is we got it up really quickly. We knew it would be such a story that this audience that so key on visuals,” said Justin Lear, director of social discovery at CNN.

CNN is one of about two dozen companies that has access to Snapchat’s Curated Our Stories, a product released last September where media outlets can search for public posts on Snapchat and curate them for a themed edition on Snapchat Discover. While CNN declined to reveal specific viewership numbers for its Notre Dame story, it said its various editions range from 5 million to 20 million viewers.

Since its launch last September, Snapchat’s Our Stories have offered publishers a new and easy way to participate in the platform, participants say. In fact, the product brought CNN, which had shut down its original publisher edition turned Snapchat Show in December 2017, back to Discover. More than 60 percent of its total audience is under age 25, said Ashley Codianni, executive producer of social and emerging media.

“CNN is synonymous with breaking news; it’s important to provide that to every audience and on the platforms that they’re on. It is a worthwhile endeavor for us participate because of that under 25 audience and, generally speaking, if we didn’t see the benefit of audience engagement or the audience at all we wouldn’t invest the time,” Codianni said.

The editions are all ad-supported, sold through Snap’s sales team, with revenue sharing back to the publisher. And with content sourced and supplied by Snapchat’s platform, the effort can also be more cost-efficient. Discover partners like Bleacher Report, which quietly stopped producing its daily edition on Snapchat as of December, had hired an 11-person team for their channel back in 2016. Meanwhile, CNN doesn’t tout a specific number of people working on their edition. The company pulls from Lear’s social team, which works across Twitter and other platforms. CNN’s previous editions had required support from designers and animators along with writers and editors. Another one of the tool’s launch partners Wave, a sports media company, has just one person dedicated to its stories channel.

Curated Our Stories are not just for breaking news moments. CNN has created weekend editions titled “5 things you can’t miss from this week” and editions around tech, luxury and style. Other partners use the tool for comedic or lifestyle content. Wave, a sports media company that got its start on Instagram, creates themed editions around particular activities such as shouting “Kobe” when throwing something into a trash can.

 

Wave creates seven to 10 editions across its stories channel and its publisher edition. The publisher views its success not just by the viewership numbers but the subscribers they gain from stories. One of Wave’s “Workout Warriors” stories garnered 47.3 million total views, 4.53 million unique views and 86,400 subscribers, according to Wave. An edition on “Flips” received 35.2 million total views, 3.4 million unique views and 100,300 subscribers.

“Wave has serialized all these segments across a wide array of topics and categories, essentially content verticals in the traditional sense but focused in a way that Snapchat audiences really love,” said Brian Verne, CEO of Wave.

Launch partner iHeartRadio also focuses on cultural moments. While the team initially thought they would use Curated Our Stories to expand their live events coverage on Snapchat, iHeartRadio changed their strategy to trending cultural moments, said Ina Burke, iHeartMedia’s vp of original content.

“We quickly learned that Our Stories works best when you are commenting on a trending or popular event or narrative, and consistently putting up stories to engage the audience. Our best stories are commentary on trending topics — Nipsy Hussle passing, ‘Us’ trailer, Kardashian love triangle — and stories that are popular topics on the platform including wedding dances and singles dropping,” Burke said.

Now, iHeartRadio produces about five stories a week along with its main publisher edition. Recent stories include “We Celebrate the Life & Music of Selena” and “Happy Birthday to the ‘Despacito’ King.” So far, its original publisher edition receives the most views. But Burke said the team hopes that the stories format will grow over time.

Not every participating publisher has been satisfied with the Curated Our Stories experience. One participant, who requested anonymity, said they stopped using it because the search functionality was proving to be difficult and that they didn’t feel comfortable using the posts without explicit permission.

Indeed, publishers are not able to see who submitted the public posts and therefore cannot communicate with them. That’s quite different to the sourcing publishers can do on Twitter or on Instagram. But despite the lack of attribution or communication, other participants said it’s an important and profitable storytelling tool.

“Today’s consumer prefers the notion of creator-led forums, not the legacy model of talking-heads dictating what the news of the day should be. This [product] allows us to tap into a world of UGC content, see what topics people are creating around and tell stories driven by this user base and reflective of these trends,” Verne said.

The post How publishers are using Snapchat’s curated stories tool for breaking news and more appeared first on Digiday.

At just under 150 million subscribers, Netflix is the biggest subscription service on the planet. But even the Death Star had vulnerabilities.

Later this year, Disney and WarnerMedia, hellbent on building their own direct-to-consumer video businesses, are expected to launch rival streaming services. Apple is introducing its own streaming offering, while Amazon and Hulu look to continue growing their own streaming services. Meanwhile, Netflix’s costs continue to escalate as the company aggressively spends more and more on original content — and takes on debt to fund those projects. And with domestic growth is slowing down, Netflix has begun to raise some prices in established markets — hoping to use some of that revenue to fund production costs.

All of this goes to show that while Netflix has a massive head start, and investors have given Netflix a ton of runway to chase its global ambitions, Netflix is not without its own major challenges.

Netflix will soon have more rivals, but are they real threats?
Customers will soon have more streaming options to choose from. Netflix has publicly said that it does not view Disney+ or other upcoming services as threats. During the company’s earnings call, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, “There’s a ton of competition out there, and Disney and Apple add a little bit more. But, frankly, I doubt it will be material.”

In the past, Hastings has said sleep and Fortnite are bigger competitors to Netflix than any one streaming video service from a rival company.

“Many are portraying [streaming video] as a zero-sum game, but there is plenty of room,” said Alan Wolk, co-founder of TVRev. “Most people will net out to having two to four services at any given time, and Netflix can easily be one of those.

While there is still a lot of unknowns about WarnerMedia’s plans for an HBO-centric streaming service, Disney recently unveiled its product, content and pricing strategy for Disney+. The ad-free subscription service will offer everything from Disney, Marvel and Star Wars films to original TV shows, as well as licensed programming across its vast library of franchises — which now also includes content from the movie and TV assets Disney bought from Fox. Disney+ will also be priced at $7 per month, which is $2 less than Netflix’s cheapest tier.

One area that Netflix may face pressure is in its licensed catalog of movies and TV shows. Rivals such as Disney are expected to pull their existing programming off Netflix, which could make Netflix less essential to customers over time. Industry reports suggest that a majority of Netflix viewing in the U.S. is on licensed fare.

“Remember, in this day and age, there are no customer switching costs,” said Peter Csathy, founder of entertainment firm Creatv Media. “It’s not like the cable days where it cost us money for the cable guy to install our video programming services and lock us into long-term contracts. Now, we can come and go as we please.”

But then again, Netflix has 148.9 million subscribers and people have grown accustomed to the streaming service being a part of their daily media diet. People might subscribe to more than one streaming service, but it’s pretty likely that Netflix occupies one of those slots than newer streaming services that still have to prove their worth to customers. “Netflix has a tremendous head start over all of the others,” Csathy added.

Can Netflix keep borrowing money to add subscribers?
Netflix has gotten people to subscribe by aggressively spending billions every year on original and licensed content — and funding a good chunk of that by taking on debt.

Netflix spent more than $13 billion on new content deals in 2018, according to the company’s earnings statement. That played a huge role in Netflix burning through $3 billion in cash last year, which was up from $2 billion in 2017 — and will rise to $3.5 billion in 2019, the company said. “There’s no change to our plan to use the high yield market to finance our cash needs,” the company said in its most recent shareholder letter.

While Netflix shows a profit on its balance sheet, the company has to borrow money in order to fund many of its growing content expenses. This takes on even more importance as Netflix focuses more on its original series, which the company has acknowledged requires more upfront payments versus spreading out licensing fee payments for a library show over multiple years. (And remember, as rivals look to pull licensed programming from Netflix, Netflix will have to spend more on originals to replace some of that lost catalog.)

The question — which has become a popular one among film and TV executives who are equally impressed and frustrated by Netflix’s aggressive spending habits — is whether Netflix can sustain its spending. Investors have been willing to give Netflix the runway to pursue this strategy because the company has consistently been growing subscribers and beating their estimates. The 9.6 billion subscribers Netflix added in the first quarter of 2019 was a new record for the company.

But when Netflix misses investor estimates during a quarter — or gives indications, like it did in its most recent earnings — that Netflix expects subscriber growth to slow in some areas, the company’s stock price can take a hit.

“So far, investors haven’t made demands for Netflix to reduce its debt, because they have been focused more on growth, which has been strong to date,” said Csathy. “But if growth slows down, and Netflix’s debt goes up, its stock price will become increasingly challenged. Nervous investors will start making new demands, including reduction in debt load and those demands will increasingly butt up against Netflix’s long-term originals strategy, which is downright existential.”

Can Netflix continue hiking prices in established markets?
Earlier this month, Netflix raised the prices in the U.S. by $1 to $2 depending on the subscription tier. The company has also instituted price hikes in Canada, Canada, some European countries, Brazil and Mexico — Netflix’s most mature markets.

In many ways, this was inevitable: Netflix has been one of the most valuable deals in entertainment with customers getting thousands of movies and TV shows for less than $10 to $20 per month. Compare this to pay-TV, where customers can regularly pay up to $100 or more per month for hundreds of channels, Netflix has been underpricing itself.

“All of these services come in at a low price with the idea that they will eventually raise it,” said Wolk. “It’s a customer acquisition tool.”

Now, Netflix will begin testing how much more customers will be willing to pay for its service, especially in markets such as the U.S. where it has become saturated and growth is slowing down. More than 80 percent of new Netflix subscribers are now coming from international markets.

The move is important for Netflix, as the company can ostensibly use new revenue created by higher prices to fund its massive content budget. And if Netflix has become essential for a wide swath of customers in its most saturated markets, then they should ideally be willing to pay an extra buck or two per month for a service that still comes at an affordable price.

But there might already be some issues here, as Netflix cited its price hikes as a big reason why it only expects to add 5 million subscribers in the second quarter — an admission that fell below Wall Street’s expectations.

The situation is different internationally, where Netflix is still growing substantially and testing cheaper pricing tiers: in India, for instance, Netflix is offering mobile-only subscriptions for less than $4 per month. Growth in India and other overseas markets will be key for Netflix, which could offset slowing or declining subscriber growth in the U.S. But that will also come with its own costs and a different set of competition. The Hotstar streaming service in India, which is now owned by Disney, has more than 300 million monthly active users, according to Disney.

Ultimately, some industry insiders argue that Netflix’s future isn’t in determining how much more it can charge subscribers, but whether the service is made even more vulnerable by the fact that it has one core revenue stream: subscriptions. That’s unlike its biggest competitors including Apple (devices and other services), Amazon (selling you everything) and Disney (selling you Disney).

“Netflix doesn’t have a business model like Amazon or Disney, where other parts of the business can help subsidize the subscription service,” said Chris Erwin, co-founder of entertainment firm Doing Work As. “That may be a reason for Netflix to invest more deeply in consumer products and other monetization arms that support its content operating lanes — which perhaps can remain broad, but not necessarily everything for everyone.”

The post After a long winning streak, Netflix’s vulnerabilities are becoming clearer appeared first on Digiday.

As an associate at General Catalyst, Rachel Blank was on the investor’s side of the table during telemedicine company Ro’s initial pitch to the fund for a seed round of funding in 2017. At the time, Ro was Roman, a single-product company selling erectile dysfunction medicine online to lower the barrier for men wanting access.

Listening to Ro’s founders talk about the problem they wanted to address — that men didn’t go to the doctor to discuss symptoms of ED regularly, and the existing stigmas around the issue — Blank saw more opportunity for the company to address similar women’s health problems, too. A little over a year later, Blank joined the company in September 2018 as Ro’s head of strategy and co-founder of Rory, a similarly modeled company addressing the symptoms of menopause.

After initially launch with an ED pill, Ro now encompasses Roman (which sells hair loss, premature ejaculation, herpes and cold sore treatments alongside ED pills), Rory and Zero, a brand selling products to help people quit smoking. Ro raised $88 million in the fall in its Series A funding to propel the launch of Zero, and this week, TechCrunch reported that the company had raised an $85 million Series B, bringing its valuation to $500 million. The fresh funding will be, in part, to drive the development and growth of Rory.

“What you want to see as an investor is the ability to move into different categories and have a bigger market to play in,” said Blank. “Ro started with just erectile dysfunction, but this wasn’t going to be an ED company forever. We want to change the healthcare system. That’s our end goal. To get there, you learn from the customer from the beginning and then adjust your roadmap.”

It’s a launchpad model currently in play by other direct-to-consumer brands that got their start as single-product businesses. These brands have category-owning ambitions baked into their processes: the DTC model is built on a direct connection to customer feedback and owning first-party customer data, not outsourcing it to retailers. That’s shaped long-term visions around how far these brands can be stretched, and the stronger the brand, the stretchier it is. Industry leaders, like Nike and Levi’s, have pivoted away from core products to serve more customers and make more money. DTC brands are now following suit — the difference is, they’re doing it at a much faster pace, saddled with VC funding.

Category creep
Casper, a mattress brand that now makes a nightlight, pillow and dog beds, wants to be a sleep company. Bombas, which sells socks, now also makes cotton T-shirts, and wants to be a “comfort” company. Lola started by selling tampons with fewer ingredients; after launching its sexual wellness category last year, it considers itself a feminine hygiene and wellness brand. Like Ro, Harry’s saw a fast foray into women’s and launched Flamingo, a women’s razor and CPG brand, last year. Buffy, a comforter brand that uses sustainable materials, wants to spread that product approach not just to sheets and pillows but to sofas, rugs and dining tables as well. Bark wants to be the de facto dog brand, after launching with a subscription box for dog toys. Some of this is largely branding, but the companies are able to pivot into new categories quicker than others.

Away, which started by selling suitcases, has launched other travel accessories and is in the process of hiring someone to lead its push into the wellness and CPG category. The brand’s ultimate goal, according to co-founder Jen Rubio, is to be able to touch on everything related to travel.

“We’re not interested in buying a customer over and over again through paid marketing. We’re interested in how do we keep the customer engaged,” said Rubio. “Right now it’s through them reading our editorial content and buying products like the Everywhere shoulder bag. In the long term, they’re staying in Away hotels.”

Category creep has set in. To drive customer and revenue growth as well as meet high valuations, DTC brands are testing how far they can stretch beyond initial value propositions, looking to own an entire lifestyle category for modern customers instead of one product. At face value, it’s not unlike the traditional path to becoming a lifestyle brand long practiced by labels to pad out the bottom line, like buying Tommy Hilfiger-branded hand towels at TJ Maxx.

Using data to figure out where to go
What’s different for DTC brands is the data-based DNA. To avoid product bloat and overstepping, modern companies are keeping customers involved in the expansion process to ensure that, while more products will ostensibly drive more revenue, they’re only reaching for customer dollars where they’ve received permission to do so.

“Brands that we invested in are looking to be category winners, and not product manufacturers,” said Andrea Hippeau, principal investor at Lerer Hippeau, which has invested in companies like Allbirds, Casper and Lola. “Unlike traditional retailers, DTC brands have a direct line to their customers. So decisions are very calculated.”

Hippeau said that the brands best positioned to pull it off are the ones that started with a hero product — one well-defined and well-made product — but built a marketing strategy around it that set it up to create in-roads to other products, categories and customers. Several factors underpin a single-product launch strategy, including limited capital and manufacturing partners. But a more focused brand can more easily drill into public awareness and cut through the noise.

Harry’s, for instance, wanted to improve the shaving experience for men and build a brand that modern men resonated with. Doing the same for women was an easy way to address the other half of the population that they weren’t before. Within Harry’s and Flamingo, shaving origins led the company to expand into the rest of the bathroom, launching body products as well.

“Our DTC platform has created a one-to-one feedback loop with our customers, enabling our insights and analytics teams to map out which categories we’ll move into next based on real-time feedback and trends we’re seeing across our portfolio,” said Harry’s CCO Brittania Boey. “These findings, along with other deep, proactive consumer work like focus groups, customer interviews, testing and studies, help us create the products our customers are seeking.”

It’s not just communication between brand and customer that’s giving DTC brands the agility to launch new products; it’s the communication between teams. Allison Stadd, the vp of brand reach at Bark, said Bark’s internal product team has created a flywheel effect: The dozens of people working across product design, graphic design and supply chain work with the marketing and merchandising teams (Bark sells at Amazon and Target as well as other marketplaces) to plan new product launches accordingly.

“We defined a Bark brand canopy and then plotted out everything that would fall under that. Everything has to fall into one of the brand microcosms in order for it to make sense, and that pairs with the financial opportunity involved,” said Stadd. “Is it something that customers want, does it fall in line with the customer and brand, does it justify the resources, is it scalable? There are places we wouldn’t go.”

Bark, for instance, would never sell cat products.

Brands have to set their parameters in order to avoid diluting the customer trust that will set them up for longevity. Lola is focused on being a “her” brand, said co-founder Jordana Kier, meaning it’s not interested in launching products for men or babies. Ro has to make product decisions based not just on what customers want, but on what’s responsible for a telemedicine company to sell. For Rory, Blank said, there are certain menopause treatments that need to be done with a doctor in person. The company’s purpose is to fill in the gaps of appointments, and not overstepping is critical in maintaining trust.

“It’s about building this for our members, so that we’re also making sales. An investor needs to see this long-term, sustainable growth after the initial growth phase. So how do you get to the next growth phase? You can’t growth hack by throwing new products at the wall. You need to build a brand with a long-term vision,” said Blank.

VC pressure can push brands, however, and that impending crush will separate the brands that are able to live up to the vision they laid out in front of investors at the beginning, and the ones who can’t. Buffy, the comforter brand, hasn’t taken outside funding, and it’s taken over a year to launch its second product. CEO Leo Wang said that unlike other brands who can funnel VC cash into new product launches, or build a brand off of products that lose money on the assurance they’ll figure it out later, every one of Buffy’s product unit economics has to make sense. That’s changed the pace of its expansion, but he thinks the slower growth rate will help to solidify Buffy as a complete home brand.

As the DTC brand category matures, companies have to prove their brands have longevity while meeting shorter-term expectations.

“All of these DTC brands are thinking about this pressure to go in the market and be successful, and the pace of that growth is ever increasing. It can’t take 20 years, you have to do it in 10,” said Eurie Kim, general partner at Forerunner Ventures. “The expectations are high, the risks are high. The key is not falling to that pressure and losing your north star and your customer. The minute you start doing that you’re losing touch with what the customer needs, and ultimately, you’ll lose the right to sell to them.”

The post ‘Adjust your roadmap’: DTC brands are stretching into new categories appeared first on Digiday.