MikMak CEO Reveals Where Performance Marketing Works Now

Listen to Sightly CEO Adam Katz and MikMak CEO Rachel Tipograph break down why traditional social commerce strategies have hit a wall and where the real advertising opportunities lie in 2024.

After a decade of Facebook-first social commerce, privacy changes have created a new reality for performance marketers. Rachel explains how retail media networks at Amazon, Target, and Walmart have emerged as the fastest path to building billion-dollar consumer brands - and why first-party data is driving this shift.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the traditional digital marketing funnel no longer exists
• How leading brands are balancing short-term sales with long-term brand equity
• Where advertising budgets are shifting in response to economic pressures
• Which retail media networks are delivering the strongest performance

EPISODE 21 TRANSCRIPT

Adam Katz
This is amazing. Thank you for joining the Breaking Through the Mayhem podcast. I'm truly honored to have the amazing Rachel Tipograph with us. She's the founder and CEO of MikMak. I mean, why do you even join us today?

Let's start here. Like, how did we get here ? We started this podcast with, you know, as an up and coming idea. And now and now we have you here like, we're truly honored.

Rachel Tipograph
I'm sure LeBron is next.

Adam Katz
LeBron. Imagine that would be I don't know if he would be on your level. So we got to see how that goes. we're really happy to have you today. Thank you for joining us. can you tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of your journey and how we got here?

Rachel Tipograph
Sure. Well, maybe I should start with how we know each other. So, Adam and I share a dear friend who's actually been an amazing influence in my life.

And we met when we were nine years old, our shared friend. And his name is Corey Capasso. and he's a he's a fellow entrepreneur like Adam and I, and that's, that's how we know each other. but, yeah, I'm the founder and CEO of MikMak. MikMak is a commerce enablement and analytics software company for mass consumer product company.

So if you're a brand like PNG or Unilever or L'Oreal or General Mills, and you're trying to figure out how you're marketing investments in places like meta or TikTok or your brand website are actually impacting your sales at places like Amazon, target or Walmart, you are hopefully working with us, because we behind the scenes are helping you do that every single day.

So, that's the sort of elevator pitch of MikMak. I've been at it for ten years now, which Adam, I think is a similar amount of time for you as well. and if there's anything that I've learned, it takes patience and grit to build a real business. And I think we both can agree on those. and,

Yeah, we're global, both from an employee base as well as from a customer base. I have employees in seven countries. A lot of that employee distribution came from two acquisitions that we've done in the last 18 months. So that's what we've acquired.

Adam Katz
That’s awesome.

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah, two of our competitors. And, happy to get into it with you.

Adam Katz
Had you ever done an acquisition prior to these?

Rachel Tipograph
No. And I decided to do two at once. So, yeah, MNA I it's a lot of work.

Adam Katz
Maybe we'll have another, another conversation somewhere about how that all works in the insanity, but that's super cool. I mean, did you ever like what made you aspire to be an entrepreneur in the first place?

Rachel Tipograph
Great question. I come from a long line of small business owners as both of my parents are small business owners, and I grew up in a house where life and work were completely blended. and I spent a lot of my weekends essentially helping my parents in one way or another and them helping me. And so, I don't think I ever understood what a boss was because both of my parents were their own bosses.

I always knew that I would start companies at a very young age. I demonstrated that I wanted to make my own money because I, for whatever reason, recognized that financial independence can actually equal independence and, I've been building businesses, I mean, essentially since I was in high school, like our shared friend Corey Capasso.

Adam Katz
Wow. That's crazy. What what went on in your high school that everyone was doing that it's probably a deeper question, but I you know, that ties into, you know, one of the things that I admire about you, from afar, watching your business, is that you guys just get so many accolades as being a great place to work.

Right. So how do you, first of all, set up your company culture and think about that? How do you groom leaders? What are the non-negotiables for you when it comes to thinking about a culture? And how is that experience that you're talking about kind of blended into the way you bring that to the table?

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah. You know, it's changed a lot with our growth. So, first of all, I do think culture is built at the top. I agree with that sentiment. And we as leaders have to be fully accountable for everything that happens within the organization. But it goes through different evolutions. At least that's been my journey with MikMak.

So the way that I sort of summarize the culture over the last ten years is, pre-pandemic, the whole company was in New York City and work was live. Friendships came from MikMak, marriages have come from MikMak children and now have come from MikMak And people would work together. They would exercise together. They would drink together. You know, I was never a part of a sorority, but in many ways, MikMak was my sorority.

And that happened, you know, all the way from the years of 2014 up until the pandemic. Pandemic strikes. And all of a sudden, we all have to think about culture differently. And I think what happened is culture shifted from shared experiences to essentially how we treat each other every day because we're operating in this highly virtual world.

And then that's where something really important happened, where you start to realize that all the drinks and the fancy offices and the snacks like that actually aren't culture. Culture is a series of behaviors that people subscribe to every single day. So there's order amongst, you know, all the chaos that we all endure every single day as we build these businesses.

And so people know what behaviors are appropriate and what behaviors are not appropriate. What has happened at MikMak is I decided to do two international acquisitions against the backdrop of a highly virtual workforce. And, you know, both acquisitions happened in 2023. By the time that we acquired these businesses, my company had shifted from being heavily concentrated in New York City to now a fully distributed workforce across the US.

And then all of a sudden, I introduced places like Canada, Ireland, U.K., France, Spain, Australia. Yeah. And those acquisitions also had their own unique cultures. And so, to be honest, I don't feel like in this very moment in time, I can stand in front of you or your listeners and say, MikMak is the absolute best place to work.

I think MikMak is a place of people who deeply care about the quality of their work product and are signing up to do really hard things. But we're in this transition period right now from a cultural standpoint, given the acquisitions and the highly global workforce that we now operate in.

Adam Katz
Wow, it's so cool that you can be so self-reflective and secure in those statements.

Like, I think that's super cool. Like, it's hard to say it's not the best place to work. I understand exactly what you mean, though, right? Like, because it's like, ultimately those early days when you're a small, small team, like the relationships are just so deep, right? And so just the hand to hand combat, so to speak. And, the types of moments that everyone goes through.

Right. And then you're also growing when you first start the company. Right. So think about how much you've learned that kind of have made you kind of go through that evolution. I got to give you a lot of respect for being able to think about it that way. That's super cool.

Rachel Tipograph
I appreciate that. I think vulnerability is the only way that we all grow and realize that we're just a bunch of people.

And, you know, for anyone who's listening, there's actually a piece of advice that a board member has given me in the last two years. And this is someone who, sits on public company boards, had a tremendous career. And as she was getting to know me, I brought her on as an independent board director in 2021.

Six months into her getting to know me, she said, Rachel, you experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and she told me I need to operate in the middle at all times, no matter what's going on in the business. And I share that, because if I could turn back the clock to when I started MikMak ten years ago, I actually wish I always operated from this middle place in terms of building culture.

because when you go from a culture that's super rah rah to tough times, it can be whiplash for the organization. So I just share that. Adam, I don't know, you know, how you operate your business, but I've become more moderate as time has gone on.

Adam Katz
God, I feel like, I'm in a therapy session right now.

I, we could talk about this forever. well talk off. Off show more about all these topics, because, you know, it's the roles are always interesting. Like you, you were the founder and CEO. I kind of came through the company to the top. So it's a very, the experience is very unique. And what I've learned kind of being at the top kind of similar where it's like you could question everything or you can stay calm, right?

So there's like and then you can be so excited by a win or you can kind of, let it play out. You and I are much more similar than you think in the sense that, like, I always rode those highs and lows. Now I've learned to kind of, yeah, stay in the middle. So it's funny that you said that's the best piece of advice.

I could not agree with you. More like it's just yeah, big hugs to that. virtually in terms of yourself, like bringing it back to the business like everyone's talking about like retail network shoppable. Right? I think a lot of that has to do with the evolution of technology, the way it's easier to do things when it comes to measurement, potentially in some places, harder in other places.

But what are you seeing that's making shoppable ads such a critical user experience today? And why are people leaned in the way that you think that they are?

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah. So, I mean, just kind of summarize the last ten years of commerce and marketing very quickly. When we started entering a world that was dominated by social, which for me, I mark to the year 2007, because that's when the first Facebook ad was purchased and it shifted where advertising used to be, about time and place you wanted to reach, you know, all women, 18 to 34, you would buy television space on NBC during friends and boom, you were done social eliminated space and time.

And we started to shift towards shared interests. You pair that with the rise of Shopify, which essentially lowered the barrier to entry for any person who had any consumer product idea to be able to, essentially launch a commerce infrastructure and then self-serve Facebook ads, all of a sudden we became a part of this moment, which was known as social commerce.

And that's where you saw brands like Warby Parker and Glossier, in a way, all come to market. I'm talking about the years right now, like 2010, and then really all the way until 2019. That playbook stopped working in the year 2020. And the reason has nothing to do with the pandemic. The reason has to do with data privacy changes.

Essentially, Apple woke up and realized that companies like Google and Meta and Shopify were building billion dollar businesses in their hardware, and they weren't seeing a cent of it. And they changed that whole nature of opting in for your data to automatically be monetized to now automatically opt out. I share this whole preamble because it created the perfect storm for the next generation of advertising, which is retailer led.

Why? Because places like Amazon, Target, Walmart, when we're shopping there, we are agreeing to allow them to do whatever they want with our data. And so all of a sudden, they woke up and realized they could build the next great advertising businesses on top of shopper data. And that created the rise of retail media. Now, today, if you want to build a $1 billion consumer product company as fast as possible, you don't do that on the backbone of Facebook and Shopify.

You do that in places like Amazon, Target, Walmart. I share all of this because that whole dynamic has changed the nature of how brands think about marketing, which is it's no longer above the line advertising and below the line advertising. Above the line advertising would have been platforms like television, radio, out-of-home, social, or below the line advertising would have been search.

You know, like in retail.com in-store displays. It's now blurred. And so the funnel has collapsed. And we're living in this moment that I would describe as commerce media. And so companies like MikMak are sitting at the center of this. And every brand is essentially trying to make sense of how to win in today's environment. And so for these, like my business works with massive fortune 1000 companies, when you see these big tidal waves happen, it creates a lot of chaos.

Initially, people need to be educated, they need to be upskilled. They need to reorganize themselves, and then they finally need to have the right providers and partners, to help them win within this ecosystem. And so that's really where we are right now. And so you take all of that and then you try to marry it to what's actually happening in the economy.

So, you know, we were living in a period of inflation. Interest rates are coming down. Hopefully things are going to normalize. But for the last 18 months, consumers have been very choosy with their dollars. And so what happens in those types of time periods is that advertisers get skittish. And so you're starting to see a lot of dollars shift around in the ecosystem.

And some brands are more shortsighted than others. And instead of investing in brand equity, they're investing in short term sales. And so that creates another tidal wave for retail media to win. And so I share this because we're just in this really interesting moment in time where commerce media at large is winning. But like every storm in advertising, you're going to see the pendulum swing again.

Adam Katz
I agree with you and we’ll be the company to pick it all up at that point. In terms of the other things I was thinking about, I mean, that was I mean, that was one of the greatest speeches of all time just now. So because of that, you know, it leads into some of the other things that I wanted to ask you just about yourself. You've been everywhere, like keynoting events, running your own podcast.

You've been on TV, you know, becoming a little bit of the face of talking about social performance. How did that happen? And then what would be your advice to people on how to become a better speaker and be less nervous? And what would be your advice for people that want to get into that kind of world?

Rachel Tipograph
I believe a big part of business is storytelling. Like, how do we all take action? How do we build relationships? It's all through communication and if you're going to be a business operator or a founder, you gotta make communication your strength. And if it's not, which I think is, you know, where you are getting at. The best piece of advice I always give to people is to take an improv class. So in whatever metropolitan area you're living in, there'll be an improv class.

Adam Katz
Did you take them?

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah, I was a theater kid, so yeah, yeah.

Adam Katz
What was your best role growing up?

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah, I was Miss Hannigan in Annie.

Adam Katz
Wow. Okay.

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Adam Katz
Got it, got it.

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah. So taking improv classes is number one because it teaches you to think fast on your feet.

It allows you to fall flat on your face and you can do that with humility and humor. And then finally the other, which is painful for many people. Record yourself, listen to yourself. You will be your biggest critic, and it's going to help you coach out a lot of the ums and the pauses and, you know, the coughs and whatever else is going on in your speech.

Those would be my two pieces of advice. with all that being said, one of the things that I think you need to do as a founder or as a business operator is ask yourself, what's your superpower? And then figure out how to really lean into that to build your business. And so it might not be public speaking and that's totally fine.

But for me it is. And so if that is part of my superpower, I gotta exploit it for MikMak. And so I just pushed myself to literally be everywhere. I know that if I get on stage or do an interview, we will make money as a business. and so I just pushed myself, as you said, to be everywhere, especially in the early days.

And then when the pandemic happened and all those sort of public speaking conference opportunities went away, I was like, what am I going to do? Like, that was a huge way that we generated leads at MikMak. And, one of my early investors and a board members, Gary Vaynerchuk, and forever, Gary was telling me, I need to have a podcast.

And so it was May of 2020, and I was like, there's no better time to start a podcast than now. And I been doing a podcast called Brave Commerce that Adweek distributes, with my partner Sarah Hofstetter. And, and it's been a blast, and we've been doing it for over four years now.

Adam Katz
That's awesome. And how do you keep such a good relationship with the partner that you do it with?

Rachel Tipograph
So Sarah and I met at a dinner party -

Adam Katz
because you both are like, could be faces of a franchise. So how do you how do you guys do that?

Rachel Tipograph
I think we play off of each other in a really nice way. and we, we're very we have similar work styles, so we're each carrying our own weight.

And, I listen, we have disagreements, but we just talk through them, and figure out a mutual win-win. And I think that has now translated into how our teams work together because MikMak and Prophet Terrell, that's Sarah's business. We do a lot of work together, and we ask our marketing teams to act like one unified team, and they do it.

Adam Katz
Question on another topic as we kind of shift a little gears there, back to what we were talking about with the next step, how did you become like the face of social performance?

Rachel Tipograph
Well, I've been doing it forever. So, you know, my first job at a school, I worked at a social media agency. My literal first job, I was Pepsi on Twitter.

I taught and I taught. You know, I taught Indra Nooyi, who was the CEO of Pepsi. Like, how do you use social media? Got it. so I've been doing it for quite some time, and I'm just a big believer that if you're passionate about something, shout it from the rooftops. Own it. and I think that just has played out as, as you've seen

Adam Katz
And tying into that, like recently you had, something I was impressed with Tia Mawry on your podcast. and there was a lot of conversation around authenticity. And how do you feel authenticity plays into marketing today?

Rachel Tipograph
I think for the challenger brands, which, you know, Tia Mawry was, the star of a television show called Sister Sister when we grew up. And then she's gone other things since, and now she has a haircare line that's available at Walmart called For You, whether it's Tia or any other influencer or challenger brand that's come to market.

I think with all of these brands, you can kind of see a formula which is its founder or celebrity lead. There's a persona, a real human that's attached to the brand, and they go after a niche segment. So for Tia, it's it's like black families. It's a haircare line that really targets that. And they build community, you know, using social and events.

And then they layer on top of that commerce. The big thing is, consumers are smart now, right? Like we all have access to the same level of information, and they're able to see through when someone's full of crap. And so, I think for bigger brands, especially when they've been around for 100 plus years, it can be more challenging for them just given their, their history.

but it goes back to what we were talking about with culture and values. Like if you're dogmatic around your values and you can get your employees to buy into that, then it should also translate into your marketing.

Adam Katz
It's funny because you know that that aligns in a big way with what we do here at Sightly, with our Brand Mentality® platform.

It's all about centering your brand in terms of what your true beliefs is to be able to do real time marketing. So I was inspired by listening to her when I was listening to it. And ultimately that kind of leads to some of the other things that I was thinking about when I got to know you over the years is how do you feel like you can take cultural context and impact sales?

Because I think a lot of the time people think that that's just top of the funnel. But how do you do that well, to impact sales? And then back to what you said a little bit earlier, I think is actually a very interesting topic where it feels like a pendulum is going to shift, where people need to start focusing on brand more, because you can only pound the user

that's going to buy you enough, right before it's like I have nowhere else to go.

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah.

Adam Katz
Right. So like in sales, we have to continue to create that upper funnel pipeline where you kind of think is the two ways that that would work?

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah. So on the pendulum swinging and brand building, the brands that are struggling the most right now are these brands that are quote unquote, are center of store.

So these, you know, mass, mass consumer product companies that are not premium and they're not private label. And for a brand to win like brand is their true differentiator. And, it's just a really, really challenging place. And so you're, you're just seeing a bifurcation in the market right now where people are either going premium or they're going value.

And but I do think as history goes to show, that what wins are brands that stand the test of time. And how do you stand the test of time by investing in your brand? And the perfect case study is Procter and Gamble. I mean, those are mass consumer product companies, brands, and they're outperforming their competitors in a significant way.

And that's because they never stop spending on brands. And they continue to invest in mindshare even when the dollars aren't there. So I think history goes to show. And what was your question before?

Adam Katz
Look at you forgetting the second question. Yeah. What's on your mind? What I was getting at is kind of when you look at cultural context, how do you feel?

Rachel Tipograph
Oh yeah. Yeah. That's going to yes. Actually translate into the future for sales. Yeah. I think there's, there's quite a few examples to look at. Let's just take Gen Z and Gen Alpha, right, who are obviously going to be the next great shoppers. Gen Z starts to turn 30 next year, which is crazy. but it's

Adam Katz
Seriously. I hadn't thought that. All right. Wow. Thank you for that.

Rachel Tipograph
And it's a really meaningful moment in commerce because what happens in your 30s, you become the next great buying power. You get married, you have a kid, you buy a house, right? Like it's it's an expensive time to be alive in your 30s. And how Gen Z sees themselves is so drastically different.

They're more racially diverse, they’re more sexually diverse. And if you look at companies that are winning with that consumer, they're playing into that. So the first place to look at beauty. So if you look at someone like Elf Cosmetics, that's way outperforming their category. I mean, they're not just selling makeup to women. They're also selling makeup to men and Cory, who, you know, leads Elf Cosmetics.

I mean, she's a rebel. And she 100% understands how to build modern brands to be a multibillion dollar pal. And she is at the heart of culture.

Adam Katz
Yeah, she's cool. I've never met her. I would love to.

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah. She's constantly aligning herself with consumers and she's way ahead of the curve. If you look at, a similar company with a turnaround story PacSun. So PacSun was a retailer that was relevant when we were in high school and middle school and then totally fell by the wayside.

You know, Zara came to market all this fast fashion PacSun on its back. Why? PacSun got away with gender aisles, there's no women's section. There's no men's section. Like the whole thing is just one unisex fluid shopping experience. Like I believe it's brands and retailers like that that will stand the test of time for Gen Z.

Adam Katz
Very interesting. You know, like it's just so much to think about. Right? You're right. And running a brand, a company, a culture. And really, I think you have to focus a lot on that playbook. I think as things move into the future, people got to pay a lot of attention to that thought process and we'll see how it goes. What's next for MikMak and what's next for Rachel?

Like what? What's first MikMak and then Rachel, because I feel like it's that I feel like you guys are a little bit of one. You and MikMak. Yeah, but you're also not right. So yeah. What's next for you and what's next for the company?

Rachel Tipograph
So, we just hit ten years in MikMak in September and, a big area of focus for us going into next year's, what I call expand.MikMak. I always like to have a rallying cry each year. And so next year is, I believe, will be expand MikMak and that is to expand the geographies that we plan to expand the categories that we plan and expand the impact that we have for our brand customers. and so it's just another way of saying, we want to grow the amount of customers that we're working with, and we want to increase the value that we're delivering to them.

And so I can't reveal trade secrets, but that's what we're very much marching towards.

Adam Katz
I could figure out what expand MikMak means.

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah. And then for me personally, I guess it's it's a similar theme, but my wife and I were in the process of trying to have a baby,

Adam Katz
Wow.

Rachel Tipograph
Yeah. So hopefully. Yeah, hopefully we, I become a mom next year, which will be pretty wild.

Adam Katz
That would be crazy. Then we could talk a lot about how to run things.

Rachel Tipograph
Exactly balance it all as a parent.

Adam Katz
That's a whole different ball game. and, you know, I think to close out a lot of our, of our conversations, this one's been, I don't know, I don't know if people saw, but I was taking notes, because I was actually learning, from some of the things that you said, which is just so cool. And I appreciate you being here. What have been some of the bravest moments of your career?

Rachel Tipograph
Business is hard. If it was easy, we all would be building our own company. And you go through cycles, you have some great years and you have some really tough years. And I think the bravest moments all happen in the top years, where you really have to check your ego at the door and figure out how you are going to win for your customers over the next five years, and organize all the employees, all the stakeholders around what it's going to take to do that?

And I think you just constantly have to remind yourself what got you to this moment in time is not going to get you to the next moment in time. And so, I think the bravest thing that I've ever done is to constantly be able to pivot, or acknowledge where we have weaknesses that we need to strengthen during the tough moments.

Adam Katz
I don't even know what to say. You've been taking the words away from me throughout today's podcast. Is there anything else you want to share with all of our guests?

Rachel Tipograph
If you want to learn more about MikMak, go to MikMak.com. MikMak.com

Adam Katz
I love that. And, well, listen, thank you so much for being a part of us today.

Like, hopefully one day I'll be on the Brave Commerce podcast. We'll, we'll see how it goes. The other way around. But it was just such an honor. We got to run into each other at a conference, and I'm happy that we did it. And I'm happy that you joined us today. Thank you so much Rachel. It was a pleasure.

Rachel Tipograph
Thanks for having me.

Adam Katz
Take care.