326 | Creating Experiences That Ads Can’t Buy | with Erin Murray

Erin Murray

Acquiring a customer these days is incredibly expensive. So if it's not working, you need to be okay with pivoting.  

Chase Clymer

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming back to the show a brand but a new face from the brand. Erin Murray is the Chief Brand Officer at Mad Rabbit. Erin, welcome to the show.

Erin Murray

Thank you. Excited to chat. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now if I'm a listener and I didn't listen to episode 86 when I had the founders on, what are the products that Mad Rabbit is bringing to market? 

Erin Murray

Mad Rabbit brings a full integrated tattoo skincare collection for those who have tattoos. Incredibly important because I don't know if you know, but about 46% of Americans have at least one.

So it's really important to think about how you're taking care of them just like the way that you would take care of your  skin on your face. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. I know almost way too much about tattoos. I worked in a tattoo shop for almost a decade. I am fully covered.  But that is not what the show is about. Today, we are going to talk about marketing.  Take me back in time. Do we want to start this with your career or when you started at  Mad Rabbit? Where do you want to go?

Erin Murray

We can do a brief synopsis of my career and then we can kind of go into how I got to Mad Rabbit. I actually started my career in merchandising and planning in corporate retail, but I loved the psychology of marketing and so sort of started my career like when I was leaving Gap, but I did a small stint in marketing and at Banana Republic Factory stores online because it was the first time they'd ever launched an online portal.

And then realized I really didn't want to stay in fashion. It wasn't that exciting for me. And then  moved into the brand side where I helped scale a brand you may or may not know of called Tatcha, who was acquired by Unilever. And it was really exciting. And since then, I've been at multiple beauty startups really helping grow and scale the brands. I was introduced to Mad Rabbit in 2021, where I was recruited into a role that they had.

I met with Oliver and Salam and Drew, who was our CFO at the time and just thought the category was super interesting. I have this sort of love for building categories that don't necessarily exist. Then all of a sudden in a few years, they kind of grow. You'll see other competitors, which is super exciting because then  retailers really look at  the brand as a great opportunity because there's a lot of category distortion opportunity.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now when you were speaking with the founders about this role, what were the jobs to be done or just problems they wanted you to solve for them? 

Erin Murray

Yeah. So funny enough, I started about 3 or 4 months after they had gone on their first Shark Tank episode. And I think at the time, I was the fourth full-time employee. And so it was kind of, hey, we need a marketing expert in this role. We're at a point where we're starting to scale the brand and we're not sure  what direction we should be taking. I think Oliver and Salam did a great job in terms of initial product mapping and then digital mapping. 

But beyond that, they knew that they really needed to captivate and build a more loyal customer base as well as grow our community. And I'm really proud of how quickly we've been able to do both of those things. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. I think there are probably some listeners out there that are at some sort of inflection point within their business where they're like, do I need to make a full-time marketing hire? So if you could put yourself in a founder's shoes, what are some of those pain points that they should be noticing where it's like, you should probably maybe have some conversations with folks,  even if a fractional role is way that you need to get into it at first, but to get some things off your plate. 

Erin Murray

Yeah. I think oftentimes founders come into or they build a brand in a couple of different ways. One, they come out at a really creative angle and their branding is super cool. But then they're not sure how to really develop the other marketing strategies, whether that's retention, or how we're going to build community, or what's our retail strategy because now, the name of the game is no longer just digital. It has to be a really omni-channel integrated strategy. Other founders come at it as, have this product. It looks really cool. It operates really well. There's nothing like it on the market. But now I don't know how to move forward. I think when you're in those types of inflection points is really when you need to start thinking about bringing in somebody even fractionally. 

I'm seeing a lot more fractional marketers now which I think they can bring a lot to the table. It's really thinking about what the strategy could look like. And then thinking about what kind of team infrastructure do you need to actually execute that. 

Chase Clymer

Getting back to Mad Rabbit, you helped through storytelling, product development, and a lot of digital strategy. What were some of the highlights of your first year or two that you look back on fondly? 

Erin Murray

I would say the last one to two years, we launched some really incredible products. We started to develop what we have as a pro artist team that really are advocates for the brand. And I think that was pretty critical because the brand really started as a consumer forward or consumer first brand versus an artist first brand. And that's sort of very different in the tattoo space. 

But then I think additionally, some other things that I think we did really, really well is building a community that helped advocate for the brand that helped increase the velocity of our socials, but also helped speak to the brand in combination with that and our communication strategy strategy from a media perspective, like PR, for example.  

I think that really helped us scale the brand significantly through our ambassador program. Now, something I'm really, really proud of, like we had a thousand people. We now have like almost nine and we have different segments. That's just 9,000 people talking about us at any given time, which really helps contribute to the strength in our digital business as well as our retail business. I would say, when we were pitching to retailers, we were knocking on so many doors. I think for the first two years, we got I don't know how many no's just about every single retailer was a no.  

And then we finally kind of broke this like the glass ceiling. And we were at an inflection point with socials where they were growing at a huge velocity. PR and media were really speaking to the tattooed consumer, whether that was through other brands, like ephemeral really helped, I think, build us well in terms of thinking about the tattoo industry in general. I think additionally, with us really combating more of an integrated strategy or integrated tattoo care strategy, that also really helped grow our community. 

And then additionally, I think lastly, we spent a lot of time understanding who our consumer was and then how to market to them. I think when I first started, the brand thought the brand was more like male-centric. But after doing a lot more digging, 52% of our consumers are female. And so we pivoted some of our strategies to really communicate and connect with the female consumer who has less than nine tattoos, but is the person that's going to integrate all of the daily products into their routine. 

And then thinking about how we segment our male customers more and because they're looking for products that are a one stop solution, oh cool, it's a bomb, I can put it all over my body, great, one and done, right? And I think by thinking about the consumer and the segments that way, that really helped grow the business in a pretty significant way in the first two years.

Chase Clymer

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Now, obviously, the name of the show is Honest Ecommerce. Is there anything that you guys pursued or just any mistakes made along the way. Maybe not even just at Mad Rabbit, just in your career, just learning bits to share with the audience to be like, hey, you don't maybe need to make these same mistakes.  

Erin Murray

Yeah. We all make many mistakes. Marketing in many ways, it's very strategic, but it also requires a bit of looking at the data, but also your intuition and how you think you can really grow a brand.

I always like to say you kind of have to marry the two together. I think that's why the guys and I work so well together. For example, super analytical and I'm like, no, think we need to test, we need to try this. We need to explore. And Oliver's very community driven. And so I think those combined really kind of help, but there is a lot of testing and learning. You're going to fail, you know, but I think what you important thing to know is especially digitally because

Acquiring a customer these days is incredibly expensive. So if it's not working, you need to be okay with pivoting. One of the things that, for example, for this brand we tried, we were like, we'd never really done a ton of influencer partnerships or paid collaborations when I had first joined. And then we were like, okay, let's test this out. Let's see how this goes.

And what we quickly learned is we were like, okay, let's go after the macro. The macro, while we got a lot of awareness, just wasn't getting us the conversion that we were hoping for. And so we kind of went back to the drawing board and said, no, we really need to go after our ambassadors and let them do the speaking for us. It gives us a lot of opportunity in terms of full perpetuity over that content that we can run spark ads or not beholden to the cost of acquisition of a customer and a paid creator because you do need that share of voice. 

And I think that really helped us. The other thing I would say  is, and I've seen this happen with brands that I've worked at and  not so much at Mad Rabbit, but with other brands in particular, where we scaled retail too fast. And I think the problem there is it's really exciting when all these retailers want you, right?

I think companies need to remember that every partnership requires the same, if not very strategic and very specific white glove partnerships. And you can't do that with everybody,  especially as a startup. And so what ends up happening is your retail suffer, know, specific retail channels can suffer depending on, you know, how much intention you're putting into it.

For example, you have to make calls like you might have full distribution in one retailer and a smaller niche distribution in another retailer. And spreading yourself too thin with a smaller marketing budget is never going to get  either one of those retailers to really flourish. So you have to make calls and be very, very strategic about how you do that. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. And if I could try to dumb this down for my brain, obviously, having the opportunity to get into these actual physical retail doors is an amazing opportunity. But just getting the product there isn't the end of the relationship. You need to also help sell the foot traffic to sell the product in that store to continue the relationship. And if you fail to do so, you will potentially lose that door in the future. 

Erin Murray

Yes, exactly. That happens quite often where if you don't have the marketing spend and the strategy to really drive to that retailer and drive traffic as you're talking about, you could be beholden to having your skew assortment cut, doors cut, etc. And then all of that work and intention that you've put into it kind of falls by the wayside. It's not just getting into the door to your point. It's beyond that. It's getting awareness. It's getting people into the stores so that you are converting.

It's an interesting one because if you are normally a digitally native brand, there's a lot of learnings from going from very digital to retail because you are having to put money and investment into the retail experience and you may not have that like direct one-to-one correlation. You can potentially see, okay, sales are increasing and we have increased ad spend to drive people to doors. We think there's an assumption that that's working. But then beyond that, you also have to do other experiential things. You have to meet the customer where they are. You have to create special experiences. 

And last year, for example, we did a lot of brand events where we were at festivals and partnering with Warner Music and different things to just build awareness that we are a brand and we're here and we're in these retailers and that this is where you can kind of find us. It looks like you're spending, but it's kind of a long game. And I think oftentimes, many brands look at it as a short game. But that's very much not the investment of retail if you want it to work. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, I think that a lot of young brands, and I'm not calling out anyone specifically, but they have the vision of like, oh, this will be a brand that's here for 25 years or something like that. But then they're making every decision with a direct response and attitude where if I don't see that ROI, it's like, well, you're not building a 25-year brand if it's all direct response. 

Erin Murray

Exactly. Brands definitely need to keep that in mind. I think we've had a lot of learnings at Mad Rabbit. I've had a lot of learnings like that with other partners that I've been with. And I think looking at your business holistically as a long game while also being fiscally responsible is really critical. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. Don't spend money you can't afford to lose. At the end of the day, it's gambling. So don't bet the house if you can't afford to not have that anymore. Alright. So I do have a question for you now. Obviously, there's a bunch of founders and people that work at brands here. But not everyone's a founder. 

And some people are one of our career Ecommerce people like yourself, Erin. So, if there's a listener out there that wants to potentially pivot into a role like a chief brand officer or CMO, it's like what are the types of things they need to educate themselves on and how do they kind of climb that ladder? 

Erin Murray

Oh, I think it's very different than it used to be. I would say like if you asked me five years ago, I would learn everything digital. Anything digital, how to acquire a customer, be an expert there. But now I think it's really looking at all integrated channels. Most hires now from a chief brand officer or a CMO role or even some marketing director roles, VP roles, they're looking for somebody who has that integrated experience. 

I don't like to call myself an expert in digital growth is not where I spent all of my career. It was really understanding the larger picture. And I think that's incredibly important. Being able to help navigate in such a way that can scale efficiently and effectively is really critical, I think today. Or at least that's what I understand from a lot of founders that I know. They're really looking for  people who have that kind of experience. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Now, we talked a lot about  what you helped Mad Rabbit achieve with the community and also the product development. I guess I do want to pause there because I know that they launched with a flagship product at the beginning. Were you there as they started to expand the product line? 

Erin Murray

Yes. So when they launched the bomb, that was their first product as a side hustle, as you probably already know. 

Chase Clymer

Yes, episode 86. Go listen to it. 

Erin Murray

And then they had launched two additional products once I had joined. So they had launched our soothing gel, as well as our sunscreen. Both did incredibly well. But I think then it was an opportunity to really create categories. So thinking about true tattoo aftercare, true daily brighteners, and then regular daily skincare. 

And so thinking about it in a more segmented way and thinking about the customer journey. And so we grew the skew like proliferation pretty quickly. I went from like three skews when I had joined and two of them had  literally just launched that year.  

So now I think we have 11, I want to say. And we're continuing to expand into the pro channel because it's really important to ensure that our artists have products that they can use during the tattoo process. So it's fully synergistic. It's from the tattoo chair all the way to daily care. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Yeah. I know a lot more about it. I don't want to bore the listeners with my inside knowledge of the industry. But that is definitely, I know, working for you building those relationships with your pro series. 

Erin Murray

Yeah. I think it is definitely really helping us. I think there's some really exciting partnerships coming. We've added a couple people onto our team who have been really embedded in the industry. And I think that's going to help continue to build our pro relationships. One of the things though, I am trying to make sure that the team is really cognizant of is that we can't lose sight of the consumer.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. 

Erin Murray

So that's what helped build this brand. And I think it's important to think about both categories. 

Chase Clymer

2025, where are you guys going to be spending your time and energy? 

Erin Murray

A lot of 2025 is really focused on the pro channel. I think beyond that, it's really exciting because we're getting ready to expand internationally. So I think there'll be some really fun things happening in the second half of 2025, which I'm generally very excited about.

And I think additionally, really continuing to hone in on our ambassador partnerships, whether that be a professional or a consumer and how do we really amplify the community as a strong share of voice for us. Additionally, I think there might be some new launches coming as well as potentially some refinements on our identity. I think we've had the same packaging design for some time.

I think since I joined, we pivoted. And now we're just refining even more based on the consumer and what's happening  in the space. So definitely some really exciting things are coming up. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Now if I want to follow along and check out these exciting updates as they happen, where should I go? 

Erin Murray

Well, you can check out our website, madrabbit.com or any of our socials. We're very, very heavily present on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok along with several others. But I think those are some of the channels that you probably can see the most native, interesting content from us. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome. Erin, thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Erin Murray

Thank you.  

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

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Until next time!