Scratch: CMO Interviews

Blending Brand & Performance in DTC with Bryant Garvin of Ozlo Sleep, Purple Mattress

Episode Summary

In this episode, we are joined by Bryant Garvin, Head of Marketing & Growth 📈 at Ozlo Sleep. Bryan talks to us about his unconventional approach to marketing, which he calls "performance branding". Performance branding is when you capture attention and build brand affinity through content that’s entertaining & emotionally resonant, while strictly measuring and optimizing the distribution of the content for performance metrics. He emphasizes how having a strong, differentiated product serves as the foundation for any ‘successful marketing’, and why all marketers need to have a basic understanding of human psychology & behavior to build campaigns that perform well.

Episode Notes

In this episode, we are joined by  Bryant Garvin, Head of Marketing & Growth 📈 at Ozlo Sleep. Bryan offers a fresh perspective on the age-old debate between brand building and performance marketing. He introduces ‘performance branding’ - an approach that focuses on building brand awareness through emotionally resonant & entertaining content, while strictly measuring & optimizing for performance metrics. This simple strategy has been key 🔑to the success of brands like Ozlo, and Purple, where he previously worked.

When you want marketing to be ‘successful’, you need to have some foundations in place. Bryan emphasizes starting with a strong, differentiated product as the core foundation for successful marketing, as a great product enables authentic word-of-mouth, customer advocacy, and a genuine brand story to tell. Additionally, he discusses the importance of creative partnership. A creative partnership means that a) you are working closely with creative partners who understand performance goals, b)  you have a structured process for developing creative content, and c) you continually testing different variations to drive business results. After all, we are all spending real dollars on all the ‘brand stuff’ 💰.  This episode is packed with valuable insights into building culturally relevant brands while driving measurable growth.

Watch the video version of this podcast on YouTube 📺: https://youtu.be/PF7B7y7LvFw

🖊️Mentioned in the Show: 

Chapters: 📕

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:30) - How Stanley Cups hijacked culture 🎭

(00:12:10) - What is Ozlo Sleep?

(00:15:23) - Performance Branding - How to get started 📈

(00:24:44) - Why constraints drive creativity for brands like Ozlo

(00:25:45) - Performance branding summarised - Ozlo’s take

(00:32:30) - What is the split between performance and brand for a modern marketer?

(00:34:30) - Why did the CMO & CEO of Solo Stove get fired?

(00:39:00) - Choosing the right creative partner 🤝

(00:42:00) - Role of the product in driving growth

(00:47:00) - What do you do post iOS 14? 🍎

(00:50:23) - Best career advice

(00:50:29) - All-time pet peeve in marketing

(00:50:55) - Best marketing resource

(00:51:05) - What should people do differently?

Scratch is a production of Rival, a marketing innovation consultancy that develops strategies and capabilities that help businesses grow faster. Scratch is hosted by Eric Fulwiler, and he’s joined by Bryant Garvin of Ozlo Sleep in this episode. Past guests include CMOs from Mastercard, GE, Shell, Hyperloop, Adobe, PepsiCo, and Papa Johns.

Find Rival online at www.wearerival.com, LinkedIn, Twitter

Find Bryant on LinkedIn.

Find Eric on LinkedIn and tweet him @efulwiler

Say hi at media@wearerival.com, we’d love to hear from you.