Gen Z Marketing: Strategy That Actually Converts | ExperiMENTAL Ep. 5

Gen Z Marketing Strategy That Actually Converts

In this episode of ExperiMENTAL, Sundar sits down with Claudia from Howbout, the fast-growing social calendar app that's cracked the Gen Z code. With a mix of irreverent humor and sharp strategy, Claudia reveals how Howbout builds product and marketing with Gen Z in mind, why authenticity trumps polish, and why TikTok is more than just a channel. It’s a feedback loop. They unpack how Gen Z thinks, what makes them convert, and why influencer marketing might not be the golden ticket people think it is.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Gen Z users are digital natives who expect authenticity, not polish
• Traditional ad tactics like logos and slogans don’t resonate
• Message testing on TikTok helped validate product features before launch
• Shares and comment tags are leading indicators of campaign success
• Gen Z can detect ads instantly and tune them out
• Brands must act like peers, not authorities
• Being transparent about the team behind a product builds trust
• Feature adoption improves when messaging reflects user language
• Gen Z leaves apps fast if the product doesn’t fit their social behavior
• Virality comes from resonance, not production value

BEST MOMENTS

00:00:02. “Friends can be themselves, but they're choosing not to. They're choosing to be something different.”
00:00:16. “From what we've seen of Gen Z, they will leave your app as quickly as they join.”
00:01:25. “You know, one of the biggest reasons of your success is your ability to build product and and build marketing to generation Z.”
00:03:11. “They kind of just want to figure out the story themselves, and they want to believe it.”
00:05:05. “We're a social calendar app that makes it easier for you to keep up with your friends.”
00:07:14. “It got like 14 million views, like hundreds of thousands of comments of people tagging their friends.”
00:08:48. “We posted kind of a few videos with different features and trying to kind of see if anything resonated.”
00:14:33. “The most interesting one is kind of on our organic socials.”
00:26:11. “If I feel that way, Gen Z feels like that times a million.”
00:30:25. “I would have a whole pre campaign set up where we're kind of teeing up something really ridiculous for our followers.”

🎧 ExperiMENTAL is hosted by Sundar Swaminathan, Head of Data Science at Bounce and former Uber leader. This show is your behind-the-scenes look at how top marketers and data scientists make smarter decisions.

🧠 Expect unfiltered conversations, mental models, and case studies that help you cut waste, build conviction, and grow your B2C business.

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Transcript

0:00

Friends can be themselves, but they're choosing not to. They're choosing to be something different. If you're just talking about your product, what are you hiding? Do you work in a factory? What's going on? They grew up in a world where they're like, well, you can be yourself, so why aren't you? Why are you trying to be someone else? 1,000%. From what we've seen of Gen Z, they will leave your app as quickly as they join. My advice would be. Welcome to experimental, the podcast that cut through the noise to bring you actionable insights in B2C growth, marketing, and data science. I'm your host, Sunder, former head of brand Data science at Uber and the mind behind the experimental newsletter. Join me as I talk with industry leaders who have driven growth at companies like Uber, Spotify and Netflix. We'll uncover the experiments, failures, and breakthroughs that lead to real results. Now let's get experimental. Hey, Claudia, thanks for thanks for joining me today. It's great to have you. Yeah. Happy to be here. Yes. And before we jump in, I just wanted to congratulate you and the team on an exciting milestone. I know it's been a few months, but, you raised the series AA from really great investors. Good water, FJ labs, and I think it's extremely exciting because you're a consumer company and your consumer company in Europe, which is doubly hard today. So just first off, congratulations to you and everything you've done in the team so far. Yeah. Thank you. We're really proud and super excited about what this what this means for the business and what this brings for our next phase. Yeah. And, I think we can jump right into the. You know, one of the biggest reasons of your success is your ability to build product and and build marketing to generation Z, and it might just be the fact that, you know, most of my network is slightly older, but I don't have a lot of Gen Z experts like you. So I am excited to just go into all things Gen Z. So let's just start off at a high level. Like what are maybe some of the misconceptions that people have or stereotypes about Gen Z that people have that are true and not true? Yeah. So it's definitely a really fun kind of age group and demographic to be targeting towards because they're like, they are fun and they like fun apps. They kind of grew up with the internet in a way that like as millennials, we kind of developed with the internet. They already had it 100% there, even though the internet was still figuring itself out. They it was also native to them. So in like kind of like the marketing space, they're called digital natives, which just means they were born knowing the ins and outs of the internet. They didn't really have to learn it. That said, they were still part of like, all the front lines of social media and kind of the evolution of all of that. So they really are trailblazers in the space. It's it's really fun kind of way of messaging to them, way of talking to them because they're super authentic. They're like, you know, they're looking for businesses that they like and they kind of don't really care about the story that you you have to tell. They kind of just want to figure out the story themselves, and they want to believe it. So kind of being super, super authentic, just being yourself is what resonates with them. And also they don't want to be sold to. So like this whole story telling side that I was talking about, you could do it all you want. They're going to pick up the pieces that they care about. They're going to not care about the other pieces, and they're going to believe it a lot less when it comes from you, generally. So in everything you do, you want to make you want to optimize for them being advocates of your business. So creating a really great product that they love or that you know, is going to resonate with them. But then from a marketing perspective, making it feel like it's someone they know and love that's talking to them like it's one of their friends. But yeah, that just means that you have a lot of room to just play around with things they can be forgiving. That's kind of a misconception I think of Gen Z is that they will come for you. But they're also willing to kind of forgive and move past quickly. So, there's just there's just a lot of room to play with them and kind of test, test different things, see what works. Do something a little goofy. Do something a little more serious, like you're able to do a lot with them. So it's fun. Yeah. And I think what you just said. Right. Like, just even the relationship you're describing appears to be more like a friend than, like, you know, client, consultant, if you will. So, like, how is that started to, like, morph the way. How about thinks about marketing? Yeah. So we try and lead with what our consumers are saying first. So it's an interesting one, especially where, where we are where, we started off as a very utility focused app. So I don't know if everyone knows, but, we're a social calendar app that makes it easier for you to keep up with your friends, keeping up with what they're up to, what they're doing, and also being able to make plans together and see each other in real life. So it's really bringing those things together. But our history started off as kind of a utility. First, we were kind of a planning app, and then we realized there was magic in kind of not just making plans with friends, but seeing what your friends are doing on the day to day when you're not together. And that's kind of really where we doubled down. But the underlying utility of the shared calendar really, really resonates. And so what we do a lot of is we'll do a lot of message testing. And by that, I mean let's put out videos that look like someone made them someone random on TikTok made them, and see if we get any initial signs of interest. For us, that's usually tagging friends in the comments. So we'll put something out there, like one of our kind of this. We were testing our messaging around friendship and kind of how we had this insight that you kind of have tiers of friendships you have, like the friends that you share your location with. If you're Gen Z, and then you're like, hey, look, here's an open door to everything I do in my life, and you can stop me at any time because I'm okay with with you checking in on me. And then you have the friends that you have maybe on your close friends on Instagram, and then you have your friends on Instagram generally, and then you kind of have these wider network. So there's all these layers of friendships. And we were like, well, you know, there's an interesting parallel between who you want to share your cat calendar with, the same as who you want to share your location with. So kind of this idea of like an open door into everything in my life. So we were kind of doing some message testing around there. Made a TikTok account to just, like, see, see if we could get some comments on on something. And, we did this post that was like it was literally a carousel. I don't know if I can curse on here, but it's a really shitty carousel. And, and it was like real friends or real friends that share calendars. That was it, the whole post. And it got like 14 million views, like hundreds of thousands of comments of people tagging their friends. And we're like, it's it's great because it was just something we threw together just to see if it resonated. And if it does, it's really validating. We even do it with like smaller scale. Obviously, if we don't get 13 million views on a video, but we do have people tagging their friends in the comments or being like, ooh, that's like what we were talking about the other day. We're like, great. This messaging is something that sounds like you would have said to a friend, or it sounds like something that would show up on your feed. That's not like us being like, did you ever think of having a shared calendar so you can see what your friends are doing and make plans together? Like they kind of don't? They're like and like either what? Either they did or they didn't think about it before, but you telling them is really not going to make a difference to them. So you want to be able to incorporate their messaging into what you have to say or what you're trying to say. Yeah. So that works well for us. Yeah. Yeah. There are so many things I want to unpack there. So first off, I think just a commenting dynamic on TikTok. So if I were to take a step back, right. Like that is not something traditionally that I've seen brands think about, right? They, they maybe see replies on Facebook, but that's usually engaging with the brand itself. But you guys are using the signals of do people are like, all of this resonates with me. Like, tell me how you stumbled on that, because that's really cool. Yeah. So it's an interesting one. We basically had some this kind of started off with us wanting to figure out what feature we should develop next, so we didn't want anything on our main page, because our main page was very much at the time, it had a different strategy. And, we've kind of evolved it a few times since then, but we were like, basically, can you figure out if any of these features are more interesting than the other? So we just created a new TikTok account. It used to be easier back then to buy. Right now it's, it's harder to create new accounts, but we did create an account that we still use for message testing. It's like our hidden backup secret account, that we'll post on it. And we posted kind of a few videos with different features and trying to kind of see if anything resonated. And yeah, we've noticed a huge, huge indicator for us is even if they don't say anything is people tagging their friends in the comments, we know that that's like I mean, it's basically like sending it in the group chat, but we have insight into the sentiment attached to it if there is one attached to it. So what I mean by that is, we can see obviously shares of our videos, but if they were tagging their friend, it's the same thing as I'm sharing the video. It's just if they have something to say. Additionally, we can analyze that or look into that. So yeah, it started off with us trying to be a little bit cheeky of like, which feature should we build next? Is there something that works? And and then through that, realizing that even if we get two people tagging their friends in the comments, that's a really good indicator that that message might even work on ads. So even if TikTok isn't showing it to people anymore, we're like, okay, that's actually going to work. Let's try it on an ad now. So it's like a free way to test it before you put any paid behind it, even if you don't go viral. Yeah. It's because because you're actually testing out to see if there's like the phrasing itself resonates and if that if that actually is like, yeah that landed. Yeah yeah yeah. Cool. Oh yeah. No, I was just going to say yeah. We that that's kind of it is just we've now since we, we identified those signals were interesting for us and they worked for us. We've incorporated that across our business. So again, like testing, seeing what features are going to resonate, seeing what messaging resonates, seeing what messaging would work as ads. Because obviously the benefit of like, for instance, TikTok ads too, is you can you can double your bang for your buck if you are getting tags in the comments. Right. So, you're paying for X amount of eyeballs, but if you know 1% of everyone that sees it that that's high, but imagine it is 1%. Yeah. It's tagging their friends. You have double, you know, the amount of people that are seeing it. So yeah. It's a good it's a good indicator for us. Yeah, yeah. And let's also to answer your question before you can curse on this podcast. Totally. It's a very conversational because I was going to say that that's fucking awesome. Like I haven't heard of a clever way of using, message testing and even feature testing like that. So I love that again. I think there's so many things we're gonna keep circling back to. Yeah. Walk me through your you and the team's emotions when you hear about the TikTok ban. So I wonder if we're going to be different than other people you speak to that I was pretty certain that nothing was going to happen. Oh, good. Yeah, I think it was just my positive outlook. And I was like, I think they're going to find a way to make it work. But one thing that also kind of eased our minds was, I want to say maybe early summer last year or mid-summer. We also had, all of our TikTok account blocked for some reason, which also blocked all of our ads. So halfway through the summer, which is our best performing time, our most resonant time, and when people are most socially active, are 100% of our TikTok just went down. And we obviously have contacts at TikTok that we work with for our paid ads and stuff, and we're like messaging them and they're like, we don't know what's going on. We're trying to get it unblocked. And so it was this whole thing where we're like, okay, there is a chance where we lose everything on TikTok. Like, what does that mean for us? Where do we go next? And we kind of game planned a bunch there and we're able to find other places where we could kind of bring some of these things to life. The benefits, though, of TikTok and why we love it so much is are audiences massive on their and be you kind of have that free for all posting. It's like you post to the world on TikTok and anyone can see it at any time. That's not like kind of old in Instagram days, even where you would have to put hashtags to find your niche and try and get in front of the right audiences, like TikTok's got it down where it's just like, I don't know, let's show it to 100 people, see what they think, and then if they are kind of liking it, I'll show it to 100 more and then a thousand, and then it kind of goes up from there. So I think that used us to we were just so convinced nothing was going to happen. We're like, it's gonna be fine. We will be fine. I love that. I mean, I also love that you had this story like six months ago that you're already kind of like, well, that was actually where we were most scared. This is like, yeah. Yeah, because that was, without warning, this one at least. We were like, all right, what do we really need to dive into? Like what can we preempt other brands are going to be doing? Like what makes the most sense for us? Can we make a story out of it, a campaign out of it, stuff like that. So we had all these thoughts, but in the summer it was without warning and we were like, oh no. Yeah, that is really, that's really clever. That's I'm kind. But I am glad it worked out for you guys. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Going back a little to, authenticity. Right. Do you have an example of when, you know, how about tried to be an authentic or sort of deviated from that and it just backfired? Or like, do you have, you know, concrete examples you can share there? Yeah. So, I think the most interesting one is kind of on our organic socials. So our, our TikTok page, generally, we've gone through so many different strategies on there. One, because the product was evolving a lot and is evolving lot and continues to evolve. But two, because we just had all these different ideas of how to bring it to life, we're very lucky that we have an awesome marketing team, and we also have a full time, content creator in house. Danny babe, 69, on her on her, personal account. But she has been working with us now for almost three years, and she's awesome. And so we have this amazing creator, and we hired her because she is quite magical in idea creation and bringing things to life. But as we were trying to figure out what how about brand is on TikTok? We tested a bunch of ways into that, whether it's like, you know, she's trying to be our target user, which at the time was. So let me take a step back. At the time, we had kind of discovered that we found this niche in a in a user persona called Savannah. We gave her that name, and she was this super organized girl who had her life together. And her friends aren't, as you know, aren't as organized as her. So she wanted a way to manage her friends lives and be able to see into her friends life so she can better organize her time and her friends time, and they can spend more time together. So it was kind of this whole story arc for this user persona that we had identified. And we were like, how do we bring this specific user presented to life on TikTok? This specific user persona is not Danny. So we were coming up with these amazing ideas, kind of how we could bring it to life, you know, through our creative how we could be doing all these different things to kind of, yeah, bring to life this Savannah. But a lot of people could see through it and, because that wasn't Danny or our team's, like, authentic selves. Whereas when we pivoted to Danny just being Danny and telling more story about our team and how we are in the office, and that were just fun people building a fun app for you that resonated a lot more. And it's, you know, it's it's working really well from our organic standpoint. Our general brand building is just like, hey, this is actually who we are. And we're a team that's working to build something really cool. And we hope you like us. Which means hopefully you're going to talk about our app more. And that's really Halo down to be to be more productive than us trying to. I think it probably came from like my background in advertising where you're like kind of really getting into the nitty gritty at that time and you needed to figure out all these user personas and how it would come to life. And a 32nd TV ad, and how do you extend them to TV and to socials? It's just not how it works. And especially not for Gen Z. So, that's where we've kind of found the magic is just being who we are. And so being creative in the ways that we talk about our, our app or who we are. But, but just being, being authentic. Yeah. I mean, rose to the top. Yeah. And I think it's really cool for you to share that. Like you didn't come into it understanding fully how was going to work. Are you also to go through this self-discovery and journey as well? So is part of the authenticity for Gen Z, the founders as well, and the team, is that something that you've seen resonate where they're like, listen, if I don't like the people, I'm not liking the product. Yeah, for sure. I think I will say there's also the side of obviously we determine what goes on our channels like so, I'm sure if we had a ton of bad press and people didn't like our founders, we, you know, we I 1,000% could see Gen Z leaving as quickly as they joined. So that's something to keep in mind. But it's definitely like I mean, we like our team. We wouldn't be working here if we didn't. So it's bringing the pieces of our team that we like to the forefront and letting that shine shine through in the authenticity. But I would say 1,000% from what we've seen of Gen Z, they will leave your app as quickly as they join. So yeah, yeah, my advice would be to have a strong, you know, a strong product that brings on networks versus just, you know, single single player experiences as well that'll that'll protect you a bit. Yeah. So I was gonna say so how how do you build that mode with Gen Z then. Yeah. So definitely one of the things that we focus on is if you want a shared calendar for you and your husband, we might not be the best app for you. But if you want a fun experience that actually shows you what your friends are doing and lets you keep up with them and lets you chat on every event, like kind of if you want the social side of it, i.e. you're going to bring your friends on, then how that's the app for you. We're going to be the best for that. This kind of took us down a path of realizing that our users were less, they were loving the product less if they only had one friend. So we really take you through journeys within the app to try and prompt you to add on your closest friends, and not just your best friend or your partner or your couple. Because there are other shared calendar apps that are built for. For that, you can incorporate your, you know, menstrual cycle and all that stuff, and then you can use that with your couple. It's not we're comfortable turning away people that are using our app in the way that we want them to. Yeah, really. I mean, that's awesome. I think, that's very rare. But I think the best companies figure that out. Right. And you kind of have to own one market thoroughly and then you can expand. So it's cool that you guys are going to do that journey to again, I keep wanting to circle back to so many things you said. So TikTok versus just like Instagram Reels, right? Like why does Instagram and Instagram Reels just not work as well for you guys? Well, it starts with we go where our audience is and they're just not on, reels as much. I think the second thing is Instagram was built for a different purpose. It's also gone through many iterations, of course, but it became a creator first platform. So the audience that you get basically building an audience on Instagram, though, they're obviously trying to work on that now to try and compete with TikTok a bit more. But audience building didn't work as well on Instagram because it just wasn't built for that. So it goes to your your audience first, and if it resonates with that audience, it pushes it out further. Whereas TikTok will go to an audience first and then push it out from there, which means you have more opportunities to get in front of the right. If you're if you're trying to evolve what you are, which we are constantly doing as a startup, it makes it a lot harder to do on on Instagram just because, for instance, the not the majority, but at the time, like if I think back to when I started, I started four years ago, like, how about, you know, a year ago even we were if we were trying to reach people beyond those really, really early users that download that followed us when, you know, we were three iterations of product to go, and they weren't resonating with the creative, it wouldn't get pushed out further. So we weren't even having a chance to be shown to people that could be interested. And that was a realization that we tried and tried again to see if there was other ways around it, but it's just not built the same way as TikTok. So we don't get we don't get as much juice out of it. Yeah. Wait, that's that's really like that's a phenomenal insight. And that like, especially for startups who are constantly pivoting and evolving, like TikTok scene would seem to be a better channel, unless you're really certain that the first audience you've got is gonna resonate the whole way. That's really cool. I hope people listening to really pick that up like that's that's the first time I've heard even just the distribution algorithm frame that way. I mean, Claudia, you and I should just speak more. This is, this is really cool. So, so going back to a bit of, like, the authenticity then, like, how does I work in especially I user generated content? How does that land or gen Z? That's still a big question mark for me. We are we haven't explored that so much. I will say what my, my, if I were to maybe give a bit of a hot take or like, my expectation is if I were to jump forwards and guess how Gen Z is going to interpret it, I think they're going to see like AI generated content as ironic. Like, I can totally see us bringing it to life in a way that's like, like obviously AI generated or like ironic because at least they're in on the joke, you know, they get it. But we haven't we haven't ventured into that much so far. Yeah. I mean, the theme that I'm getting is like just leaning into stuff versus shying away from it. And, and again, maybe this goes back to the authenticity, but I also think there's a flip side to Gen Z seems to be more, willing to receive that authenticity. Like, if I look at previous generations, like there was a felt like a mode that you had to conform to, and if you broke from that. Yeah. I think I'm just commenting on how much I really like Gen Z, and maybe I should have been Gen Z in my life. Yeah, it's interesting too, because again, like, if I think back to my like big client days and advertising and the, the thing to talk about back then was like, oh, Wendy's on Twitter. And it was like, Wendy's is calling out Burger King. And they're having like this fight. And I was like the first kind of iteration of a brand having like trying to have a voice or like trying to be an entity that isn't just like their product. And if you think back to like when that was, that was kind of when Gen Z was growing up or like trying to listen more. So they were like, well, okay, so brands can be themselves, but they're choosing not to. They're choosing to like can feel something different. So like, why? Yeah. What are you trying to there's just skeptical by nature. So it's like, well, if you're just talking about your product like what? What are you hiding? Yeah. Do you work in a factory? What's going on? Like? I think they're just a bit more. They grew up in a world where they're like, well, you can you can be yourself. So why aren't you? Yeah. Why are you trying to be some someone else? And to your point, it's a, you know, there's probably they had so much access and visibility that like, you could then double click quicker than you could in any other generation to be able to see through that. Oh. A lot. So one of the things we talked about before you came on was this idea that Gen Z is ad blind. What a sound bite. What does that mean? So I kind of what I was saying before, where they don't want to be sold to, and I can even speak about my own behaviors, like, I can tell when an ad is on my TikTok feed within 0.5 seconds of it showing up. Like I you just know on the majority of content, like you're like you're scrolling, something shows up and you're like, this wouldn't normally be on my feed. And then you're like, all right, it's an ad. So you just swipe. If I feel that way, Gen Z feels like that times a million and it's in like 0.1 second. They're like, that wouldn't be on my feed and they're just going to swipe. So it's not the type of thing. Again, like old advertising would be like, make sure you have your logo. Because even if you have them for one second, they're going to see your logo and they're going to have an impression and they're going to, you know, feel familiar about your brand. I would almost say the opposite. Like we some of our best performing ads have been super raw, super strange. Like you're almost like you're almost waiting because you're like, why? How is this an ad? Like, what is this an ad for? But then they they convert. Really? Well, they're like, oh, actually, that's something that I could see using my, like, music with my friends. So if you make it feel like something that should be on their page and would be on their page, it's they're going to they're going to pay attention to it more than if, if it if it looks like an ad or feels like an ad or even like I know I've, I've said this a few times, like if it's like, try hard, like, I'm trying to think of an example we were talking about, I want to say yesterday in the marketing team, it's like this ad that keeps showing up. What was it? If I remember it, I'll, I'll bring it back up later. But it was the fact that we were all getting the same ad on our TikTok, and it was so clearly trying to be like a good ad. Yeah. Which I guess is a hard thing to do, but I would say just I mean, I would say biggest advice is just use what your, what you what other people are saying about you to sell your ad like Apple or product generally like if it if it if you're trying to think of the right way to message it and you're thinking for a really long time, you probably missed the point, you should probably just throw things together, put it out there and then learn from from those. And even if it is raw, like make a carousel and throw in some copy and put a small amount of budget towards it and see if it gets any traction. And then go from there. Because if you, if you're going to go through big budget and big campaigns, unless it's a well thought out like overarching strategy and you your press involved and you know, it's going to get a bunch of eyeballs like it's almost not worth it. So for us, like, we're still a startup, we don't have big budgets like, for me to think of something, you know, big production, it's it's just not going to be worth it because they're going to see through it unless we're in on the joke. And then you kind of have to build the joke with them. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's actually a very funny. I'm not going to call a Segway. I don't know what it is, but like, just given the timing, if you had the budget, would you advertise at the Superbowl? I kind of knew you were going to ask this question. Like I felt I felt it coming because I was going to say Duolingo is a great example of that. Yeah. Where they built their personality like they built their personality online. They stuck with it. They kept it. They had Super Bowl ads last year and the year before or whatever it was. And they the first year they tried to be in on the joke and they were they built something that was like, oh my God, Duolingo. I don't remember even what the ad was, which is probably bad, but I know that they were there and, you know, they were doing something where it was like, if you if you know us, you're in on the joke. And that worked really well. And then I remember them trying to do it again. I think it was like, I think they did an ad that was like it was something to do with like a Love Island. And they had basically they were putting together like a Love Island where no one spoke, spoke the same languages or something like that. And I remember the comments Terry at the time was like, they're trying too hard now, you know? So it's a really thin it's a tough line. I would say, if I were to approach the Super Bowl now, we had budgets, we were going to go for it. I would like try and before the Super Bowl do a whole like I would have a whole pre campaign set up where we're kind of teeing up something really ridiculous for our followers. Yeah. So that if once people are talking about it on the screen, the ones who know like it's an if, you know, you know, scenario or something like that, like I would make sure that it's not just I mean, 30s during the Super Bowl isn't isn't going to get us what we want. But if everyone is then like, oh, I saw like I knew they were going to do that or I saw they were going to do this or, oh my God, that's so funny because they did X, y, Z or oh, that other thing makes sense. Like all of those, those conversations where then you have them between people, are going to, are going to benefit someone like us more. Well that's really cool. So like now you're thinking more like, hey, actually advertise to our audience or maybe our own customers and not let's try to bring in that new let's try to bring in, you know, expand the pie. I would say it would definitely go to new audiences, but it wouldn't be because of the TV ad. It would be because I, me, Claudia, I'm a how about user. And I saw that in it I got it. Yeah I would tell my friends like, oh they did this. Oh no. Like actually I knew because it was really big. They did that because it was really funny that they did XYZ. So yeah, suddenly then it's coming from your friends and not from, you know, the TV. Yeah. TV spot. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But on like, are there brands that you're seeing that you like or just like, I really like, love what they're doing? You know, do you have examples of people that you admire? Yeah. I mean, there's there's a bunch of different examples and people that we look to for a variety of, of different reasons. Like, I mean, Duolingo is an obvious example of just like they were able to bring to life, basically, they were able to build a caricature of a brand kind of first, which meant that they were able to learn like Ryanair is another great example where, you know, they were going on social media and like they were like, well, we're cheap airlines. Like, why should we even pretend that we're not a cheap airline? So if someone's like, oh, I purchased a window seat and they're sat with like the wall and there's no window, and they tweet that Ryanair answers and they're like, well, you purchased on Ryanair. If you wanted a window seat, go with British Airways. Like things like that where they can just be like authentic. Yeah, it's it's those types of brands that we always feel like we have a lot to learn from. Yeah, yeah. I think also, you know, marketing is not just external, but there's also the whole in-app experience that is part of your relationship with the user. And I think there's there's other kind of apps that we look to in terms of like a great user experience that's going to kind of keep you around. I'm trying to think of like what was maybe a more recent one that we, we looked into. But yeah, I again, maybe it's cop out example is Spotify. It's a great user experience. They have a lot of opportunities for you to bring your friends into the experience with you. Obviously they have wrapped at the end of the year, which is shareable and it all feels like it should come from them. They're like the cool streaming service. So yeah, things like that. We, we look to, to learn from as well. Yeah. You you mentioned something that I thought was interesting around the in-app experience. Like do you as the VP of marketing, do you, do you get to own the copy, in the app? Like, you know, how do you influence and continue that journey in the app too? Yeah. So a huge part of my role is also kind of the product itself. And, how we can use the insights that we gain about our market or what people are doing in conjunction with the in-app data that we're getting. So how people are actually using. Yeah, it's kind of bridge some of that story. So if they're, you know, if they're coming in for a shared calendar, but they're really, really loving the feed feature, which is, you know, in our app then kind of what is the messaging differences that we want to be testing there. Or the other way around is, as I said, we we test product on our with our audience, with our audience, our other audiences all the time. And so kind of how can we determine the holes in the market to make our product more, more relevant and more interesting? And yeah, that's why we're doing that all the time. It's yeah, a huge amount of my time is in product, especially right now. So yeah, we'll probably. Yeah. And then copy is an extension to that as well. Of course. Right. Well I'm good, good on you on the team. Because I think that's often such a disconnect is product and marketing. But you know there seems to be like a better symbiotic relationship than most places I've heard. And I love the way that you're also using marketing to help product and then vice versa. Okay, let's pivot to another hot topic that you have. Influencer marketing is overrated, I think is what you said. Okay. Yes, yes, I know there is a I think there is a caveat that I am not mentioning this. Yeah. Yeah. So I would I would stand by that. But I would say I think some brands have been able to do it really well where they craft, you know, like a really authentic relationship with a large scale influencer. So I think I'm, I'm a little biased too, because we've been able to get pages like for instance, our artist TikTok account got us many, many, many, many, many more views than any influencer we've tried to work with, no matter what their sizes and the views led to more conversions than any influencer that we've worked with. Ever so skeptical from Havas perspective, it doesn't seem to work. But what I will say is crafting a true relationship with a large scale influencer. I think resonate, I would say resonates with Gen Z. So like, what's a good example recently brands can be themselves, but they're choosing not to. They're choosing to like be something different. If you're just talking about your product, what are you hiding? Do you work in a factory? What's going on like? They grew up in a world where they're like, well, you can be yourself, so why aren't you? Why are you trying to be someone else? 1,000%. From what we've seen of Gen Z, they will leave your app as quickly as they join. My advice would be. Welcome to experimental, the podcast that cuts through the noise to bring you actionable insights in B2C growth, marketing, and data science. I'm your host, Sunder, former head of brand Data science at Uber and the mind behind the experimental newsletter. Join me as I talk with industry leaders who have driven growth at companies like Uber, Spotify and Netflix will uncover the experiments, failures, and breakthroughs that lead to real results. Now let's get experimental. Hey, Claudia, thanks for thanks for joining me today. It's great to have you. Yeah. Happy to be here. Yes. Before we jump in, I just wanted to congratulate you and the team on an exciting milestone. I know it's been a few months, but, you raised this series from really great investors, good water labs, and I think it's extremely exciting because your consumer company and your consumer company in Europe, which is doubly hard today. So just first off, congratulations to you and everything you've done in the team so far. Yeah. Thank you. We're really proud and super excited about what this what this means for the business and what this brings for our next phase. Yeah. And, I think we can jump right into the, you know, one of the biggest reasons of your success is your ability to build product and and build marketing to generation Z, and it might just be the fact that, you know, most of my network is slightly older, but I don't have a lot of Gen Z experts like you. So I am excited to just go into all things Gen Z. So let's just start off at a high level. Like what are maybe some of the misconceptions that people have or stereotypes about Gen Z that people have that are true and not true? Yeah. So it's definitely a really fun kind of age group and demographic to be targeting towards because they're like, they are fun and they like fun apps. They kind of grew up with the internet in a way that like as millennials, we kind of developed with the internet. They already had it 100% there, even though the internet was still figuring itself out. They it was also native to them. So in like kind of like the marketing space, they're called digital natives, which just means they were born knowing the ins and outs of the internet. They didn't really have to learn it. That said, they were still part of like, all the front lines of social media and kind of the evolution of all of that. So they really are trailblazers in the space. It's, it's really fun kind of way of messaging to them, way of talking to them because they're super authentic. They're like, you know, they're looking for businesses that they like and they kind of don't really care about the story that you you have to tell. They kind of just want to figure out the story themselves, and they want to believe it. So kind of being super, super authentic, just being yourself is what resonates with them. And also they don't want to be sold too. So like this whole story telling side that I was talking about, you could do it all you want. They're going to pick up the pieces that they care about. They're going to not care about the other pieces, and they're going to believe it a lot less when it comes from you generally. So in everything you do, you want to make you want to optimize for them being advocates of your business. So creating a really great product that they love or that you know, is going to resonate with them. But then from a marketing perspective, making it feel like it's someone they know and love that's talking to them like it's one of their friends. But yeah, that just means that you have a lot of room to just play around with things. They can be forgiving. That's kind of a misconception I think of Gen Z is that they will come for you. But they're also willing to kind of forgive and move past quickly. So, there's just there's just a lot of room to play with them and kind of test, test different things, see what works, do something a little goofy, do something a little more serious, like you're able to do a lot with them. So it's fun. Yeah. And I think what you just said. Right. Like just even the relationship you're describing appears to be more like a friend than like, you know, client, consultant, if you will. So, like, how is that started to, like, morph the way how about thinks about marketing? Yeah. So we try and lead with what our consumers are saying first. So it's an interesting one, especially where, where we are where, we started off as a very utility focused app. So I don't know if everyone knows, but, we're a social calendar app that makes it easier for you to keep up with your friends, keeping up with what they're up to, what they're doing, and also being able to make plans together and see each other in real life. So it's really bringing those things together. But our history started off as kind of a utility. First, we were kind of a planning app, and then we realized there was magic in kind of not just making plans with friends, but seeing what your friends are doing on the day to day when you're not together. And that's kind of really where we doubled down. But the underlying utility of the shared calendar really, really resonates. And so what we do a lot of is we'll do a lot of message testing. And by that, I mean let's put out videos that look like someone made them someone random on TikTok made them, and see if we get any initial signs of interest. For us, that's usually tagging friends in the comments. So we'll put something out there, like one of our kind of this. We were testing our messaging around friendship and kind of how we had this insight that you kind of have tiers of friendships you have, like the friends that you share your location with. If you're a Gen Z and you're like, hey, look, here's an open door to everything I do in my life, and you can stop me at any time because I'm okay with with you checking in on me. And then you have the friends that you have maybe on your close friends on Instagram, and then you have your friends on Instagram generally, and then you kind of have these wider network. So there's all these layers of friendships. And we were like, well, you know, there's an interesting parallel between who you want to share your calendar with, the same as who you want to share your location with. So kind of this idea of like an open door into everything in my life. So we were kind of doing some message testing around there. Made a TikTok account to just like, see, see if we could get some comments on on something. And, we did this post that was like it was literally a carousel. I don't know if I can curse on here, but I had a really shitty carousel and, and it was like real friends or real friends that shared calendars. That was it, the whole post. And it got like 13 million views, like hundreds of thousands of comments of people tagging their friends. And we're like, it's it's great because it was just something we threw together just to see if it resonated. And if it does, it's really validating. We even do it with like smaller scale. Obviously, if we don't get.