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What is up DTC pod? Today we're joined by Ben Acad, who is on the co founding team of Feastables. And he also runs an agency called Magnetic, which works with cultivating some of the biggest brands and celebrity led brands that you know of already and that you're going to know of as they continue to develop products. So, Ben, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about your personal background and what kind of led you to the position that you're into today.

Yeah, man, great to be here. Big fan of the pod already, so thanks for inviting me on. Yeah, so a bit of background, I guess. I'm a glutton for punishment with figuring out new product categories. I think I always wear the marketing pattern no matter what I jump into, but it's really about just figuring out product that perhaps doesn't have a defined category. So had a social media agency that kind of predated Facebook all fucking around with MySpace fan pages back in the day, and then started to pick up business with brands like McDonald's and BMW on the MySpace platform. So cut our teeth on social. I built that company up pretty big back in the day, but just started to have this hang framing call for what was back then pre DTC, figuring out product and e commerce and then subscription got poached by Facebook to be one of the first employees down here in Australia to figure out what sort like brand partnerships look like on the Facebook platform.

Just as ads manager and power editor and platforms like that was starting to be built out. Got bored pretty quickly of all the free barbecue and food at HQ and ended up co founding e commerce subscription business, which I then sold and then just became obsessed with big, big brands. And just like how do you start to sell and compel people to buy something they don't know that they necessarily want? It was around that time a budy started a brand called manscaped. So Paul Tran, really, really smart know, just told this shaver company he built up was dedicated on helping men shave their balls. And it was all built around humor and fun and it wasn't yet a category. And I was just like, I'm in. It was a very smart team by that stage, but also just completely obsessed by solving product market fit through content and then obsession about testing. And it was just a very fun place to come in.

So led that team, built that from a very early stage. What happened then? I think I started something, solved it, moved back to Australia, then got the phone call from Jimmy Donaldson's manager, Mr. Beast manager, saying, hey, Jimmy's going to build a chocolate factory. He wants to give it away. I think we got a chocolate company here. Let's figure it out. So co founded or jumped into the co founding team there with Feastables before, it was just a kind of idea stage and they built a world class team of operators like CPG vets and we just built that brand up very quickly. So we launched that, I think with about six months notice, hand coding that theme, that shopify theme, getting it ready for launch.

Main channel video from Mr. Beast went live down to the wire, like in terms of seconds to launch that launched and it became one of the most iconic, or in my opinion, one of the most iconic brand launches. And that really kind of got my toes in the water of working with Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and then just the identification of man, they don't know what the fuck they want. Let's figure out how to build it. And that's kind of ultimately why I left feastables and built a venture studio called Magnetic. So magnetic now is all about creating consumer brands that may not have a clear map or focus or purpose as yet, but we can solve that through content. So our approach to this is start with content first, build a product around that, and then align it with a creator or celebrity as a triple threat combo. So that's the initial thesis.

With magnetic, we're hyper focused on content and creative. We're building a huge content facility here, down here in Australia dedicated to short format viral content that we can layer in brand execution into too. So that's the very short background of what we're building.

Yeah, I think it's so cool. Especially like you're saying right now, having not only worked on the brand side, seeing what creative performs, and a really high functioning team transitioning over that, working with literally the biggest creator in the world, and now spinning out a studio where you guys can kind of spin that out. But before we get too deep into the studio and how you guys think about building out content that scales, as well as partnering it with the right celebrities, the right talent, and the right operators, I'd love to get into some of the lessons that you learned at Manscape. I think Manscape, like you were alluding to earlier, is one of those brands that really, it took a product that hadn't been innovated in a while and had a really refreshing take on their marketing, messaging, their content, their copy, all of that sort of stuff. So I'd love if you could just share some of the learnings and lessons that you found while you guys were building up that brand.

Yeah, it was interesting. The initial thesis with Manscaped was there was a product and a category for every body part except for the man's bowl. And so we knew that there was money, we knew that there was a demand there. We dug a little bit deeper and realized that I think it was like 85% of dudes were already shaving or looking after their junk down there. But how are they doing it? So we dug into that. We did quite a lot of consumer research and just went out and asked them, how are you doing it? Turns out they were just stealing their wife or their girlfriend's. Razor blade in the shower and hacking away. So we kind of just sold that through old school kind of consumer tactics and research and very quickly built a product, and that's now a full suite of products.

But I think the biggest thing that we kind of hacked into early on was just like, how do we make this untaboo? How do we make this something that dudes actually want to become a part of and build a brand that actually forms connection? It's really boring subject like shading your balls. We would never talk about it if it wasn't done with how manscaped actually solved it. So we just made it funny. We made it so that the ads were engineered to go viral. One of the things we learned early on was that it was very difficult to find agency partners that would actually get that and understand and give it the level of thought and the obsession that we were focused on giving the category itself. And so an example of that was the content framework that we built with that. Manscape is known for the ads and creative early on and then the big influencer partnership. But how we got to that point was really interesting.

I think it was like a Monday morning we would all, like, the entire marketing team, and at this point, 95% of a team was marketing jumped in, jam out ideas, come out the other end with one or two content plays or creative ideas. Our producer team, like video production, creative guys in that meeting as well, jamming out on the other end of that, on the output is just like one to two video ideas. And they would then go shoot and then produce them midweek. And then by Friday, we would deploy them and we would see what stuck organically. So we're looking for things like virality, organic reach, just engaging rates. And if there was performance there worth investing into, then we would then deploy, like, a proper production team to make it a higher end production. We would then back with media. So it was just this obsession around using content, finding what's stuck, and then backing the winners through proper production and making them so they can go onto a hulu, then go on to a streaming service and then scale them from there.

And that's really what gave us that cutthroat and that edge. And then kind of ultimately what formed our retail partnerships as well with launching, coming from DTC into retail play from there. The other thing was just like constant evolution. I think manscape sort of funnel was like, get them with humor, convert them with sophistication and hygiene and engineering and the right tool for the job. Don't nick your balls. Trust us, because we're the right ones. But early on, it was a pretty tough game in terms of product development and engineering. We had a long way to go from where we started to.

I think they're up to the Lawnmower 5.0 now. But it was just like this constant evolution of engineering that kind of got us closer and closer to backing ourselves into saying, nick, safe or we won't let you cut your balls. It took a long way to get to that point, so that was a big evolution. The other funny thing is just figuring out and creating, I guess, a thick skin for the crazy photos and images that our CX team were exposed to. You can only imagine going from the early days of like, yo, you promised me I wouldn't pick my balls. But watch this. Just like figuring out how we kind of get people through and then teams through that as culturally. So a lot of fun early days now, I think, obviously category leader, one of the biggest men's hygiene brands on the planet and just still continuing to grow.

I watch headcount continuing to grow. Like, new countries are launching one of the few brands, I think, that hit profitability through 23, which was great. Just been a joy to watch as I finished up with them a couple.

Of years back, we're based in Miami, and I remember laying at the beach in Miami beach, and I think I saw an ad of manscape passing right by. And it was something like, it was like a bold claim like that. Bold question like that of have you shaved your balls or something? Like it was. It struck me because it's like, well, Gillette wouldn't do so. And it's just so interesting as well in terms of the consumer behavior. You just mentioned previously, this thesis of how do you build products to make people buy something they don't necessarily want? And so a lot of people would have given up on this. Like, oh, there's already a solution. People are using their girlfriend's razors.

And so can you expand into that? How do you extract that from the consumer to knowing, do they actually not want it in any possible way, or is there a way that they do want it in? It just has to be packaged correctly and we just have to cut through the noise. And how do you go about doing that?

Yeah, so incredible question. It's kind of like a product now that we're building as part of magnetic's validation engine to identify exactly what people do want before they know that they want it. And so we do that through a validation framework. And it's old school pre launch testing where we load up mock products inside either ads or organic content, take them to a landing page, get them to sign up or enter in a credit card for a dollar, which equates to like a presale. And then just watch all the metrics that happen behind the scenes with that. So if you break it down to ads, landing page, email flows as part of this testing framework. On the ad side, we're looking for scroll stop or some scroll stop sort of rates. We're looking for rates between like 30% to 40% there.

Is the product good enough and compelling enough to stop the scroll? And then what is the click through rate? So if we're paying for this ad or this placement, what is the cost per click and what is the click through weight rate of created? And then we're tracking the activity that happens on the landing page of just like heat map sensing and just like what's clicked, what's not. And then cost per lead, cost per email address, cost per text, things like that. What is the metric there? Which then helps us identify and start to predict what is the intended CAC when we do eventually launch. If we're tracking super low on a cost per lead, we can start to then forecast, at least kind of predict what a future CAC will be. But all of that then gives us psychographic demographic data. So then we're kind of validating market need tam demographic cost, and we can start to build out a proper model with that. And that's so freaking valuable.

And are these like mockups? Are these the actual product? Are these like 3d renderings? Or is it just a messaging and a concept?

We will always take it through an art process. We usually spend like two to three days building out three or four different variants. But let's just say we start with a product, sorry, a category, which could be. We know we want to get into personal care for teens, but we don't know where to start. Is it deodorant? Is it face care? Is it fucking face wise? Drywall is acne treatment. We usually start with the same brand, same name, same copy, but four different products. Throw that out there, see what sticks. Just say the winner or the banger.

There is deodorant. Then we'll start to go into creative direction and sort of brand and product set up, and then create four different packaging alternates, four different landing page alternates, and just start to watch that whole thing to play out as it gets down the line. We start to test name formulation, call outs, pricing, all the way through so by the time it gets into looping in product and operations, we have a really well baked product strategy, a marketing strategy. We have enough to build out a proper financial model with actually validated assumptions in there, which then tells us, hey, is this something we want to start? Is this something we want to kill? Or is this something we want to partner with somebody else? Because it's just a lot bigger than what we think it's going to be.

Yeah, I love that there's so much to unpack there. And one thing that pops to my mind is, well, when you started, when you got that call from Jimmy's manager, with a creator that has so much pull and says, I want it done this way, we have to go fast. Was this concept, this framework born after that experience? Do you lose control of your framework and process when working someone that will go that fast?

Yeah, man. I've had so many laid eye conversations with our then Cigio, Jim, and also Jimmy. The answer is, the hard answer is, we didn't get time to test shit with feastable, it was a grind, it was a know. We launched that thing. I think I had, like three days of most sleep. It was a hustle just to get it out to market. What you're going to see now with feastables, I think it launched last week, is a complete reformulation and a rebrand. The company got big enough to take a breath and say, is organic, grass fed the right approach? Does middle America, or, like West Coast, East coast, who wants this? And then how do they want it? Is the taste good enough? Do we actually have the capacity now to do proper research? I think feast of teams, like 90 full time people, including an actual product team now where we can dig deeper into these numbers.

The answer was, and Jimmy's made answer was that, no, it needs to be generic. It should be a commodity that everybody can afford, so everybody gets to own a piece and feast of all. There's no restriction, be it location, so you can buy it everywhere in the country now. Everybody can afford it. And it's at a taste profile now that everybody loves. And what you'll see now is it's tied way deeper back into Mr. Beast's brand and his entity and what he's crafted and created. So, had we have had time to test, we probably would have got to that ahead of a pre launch.

But, alas, the pace at which Jimmy thinks and breathes and acts and wants things to happen, it's like, get it to market. I don't think it would have taken us long to get to the correct assumptions with feastables. But making product formulation at that scale is very tough to get bang on first time. Do I think it's too early for a complete reformulation and rebrand? I think so. I think there's still a lot of market share and ownership of what they had and what we have had, and I think testing would have definitely fixed that. And I don't think the change is going to give the benefit that we probably would have expected. It's not going to be a 2030, 40% lift in revenue. It'll be like incremental five, six, 7%.

But what it is now is tied back, right back into Mr. Beast. And Feastables is more of an integrated brand. Long answer, but, yeah, no time to test that, Jimmy.

Yeah. And I think something else that's important is the framework that you just described. There's a lot of creators in the world that are not Mr. Beast. Right? Like, when you're Mr. Beast and you have the most distribution out of anyone in the world, and you can create, you obviously want to create a great, great product that checks all the boxes, but you've got that unfair advantage when it comes to distribution. So I think it's really neat to be able to approach, like, what you're saying, different creators and sizing up different markets and having that same framework to apply, because not everyone is MrBeast, and not everyone has that baked in distribution. So on the heels of that point, I'd love to know, kind of like, tell us a little bit more about the studio.

Right? What types of creators are you guys working with? What types of operators are these in house brands that you're spinning up yourself when you're scouting the market for opportunities? What are you looking for?

All right, so, massive question. There's probably a few answers. The first and foremost, we're building, I guess, a destination where talent management comes to us and says, hey, we think we have something here with product. We don't know what it is yet. Let's figure it out together. So we'll take them through that same framework to get, like, creator or celebrity product fit. Like, what is the product? Does that creator or celebrity have the right to launch a product? And has that audience been tested to actually convert, to actually pull out their credit card and buy something? That is a huge thing to wrap your head around. It's easy for these smaller, and I wouldn't say smaller, but even, like, YouTube channels with 1020 million subscribers, they still don't have that loyalty to actually pull out their card and buy something.

So we figured that out first through test. The easy one there is merch, like spin up a one page, one product merge line tied to a video or to a piece of content and just test and measure. When we get to that point, it's like, what is the category we're going after? So we'll then take a look at. We'll have conversations with partners at Walmart, Target identify. Where can we start to think about getting either, depending on the creator side, a single digit market share initially. Where do we think we can pick up five to six to 7% of $10 billion business and what do we think we can add in terms of that and where does the creator play in? Then we'll wrap them through that framework of products, market fit testing, Tam creative testing all the way through. So we do start net new. We're talking now with if there was a jimmy for every category, that's who we're going after right now.

Definitely shooting for moonshots, billion dollar brands is kind of like the main thesis of what we're shooting things for in saying that we are looking still to roll up a number of DTC brands that have launched. What we're benefiting from right now is some beautiful brands, great products, really smart founders coming out the back of COVID and supply chain issues, really tough market conditions where we can then absorb them, align them with the celebrity and creator, and then relaunch or repartner from there, keeping the original founder in check on the table to enjoy the ride. But we come in and operate full stack with that. That's a really compelling business model that I'm a big fan of, just because there's an incredible products out there that are close to being killed off, which kills me just as a founder. So trying to create a safe space for that. But I think the bulk of what we do is net new. My obsession now is just like, how do we solve Gen Z, Gen Alpha and their desires, both in terms of content, trends, and then, and so our whole formulation with how and before we start is this is something Jimmy told me is like, think in thumbnail title, like force and condense your idea down to like, five words of the design. To get it, click.

Think about the thumbnail title. What is the title of the video? So Feast of Wolves was like, I built and gave away a chocolate factory. Like, fuck. Of course that's going to be a bang out. Like, it's just Mr. Beast doing like Willy Wonka. Like, no shit. So that taught us to think about that.

So as we think about scaling that down a little bit to sort of mid tier creators, how do we sort of integrate with their creative, their strategy, and how do we use the product and the category to enable them to produce content they normally wouldn't? It just wouldn't work otherwise. So it's like thinking about content first, product second, and then just this mishmash of how to kind of make it all kind of stick like that. So there's a few different ways that we're approaching it, but deep in exploration, we are incubating or launching three products right now. Two will likely make it. One is our validation engine that we will then start to bring into other creators, other people, other innovation teams to use them to validate.

There are variables that you can control to make these partnerships work. And then there's like, the variables that are totally out of your control, right? Like if you're going after the Mr. Beast of every vertical. Mr. Beast also has a talent for business and understanding of business. And I'm curious on what is the difference between the two approaches, which is a you either package it up and find the right creator and propose it, or the creator comes at you with the idea. Which of those two dynamics is best? Do you stick to one? Because if the creator knows nothing about business and product manufacturing and everything, I could see how if it's the creator's idea, it could be a bigger challenge. I'm curious if that's right or wrong.

Dude, great question, man. I think we're talking to, and it's locked down with NDA, so I can't say who, but we're talking with one of the world's biggest athletes right now. He's like, changed the game as big as it gets. He's not native to business, to producing content and all the things that are important to us, and we're waiting for for a co founder. And so it's a challenge there. We've got one of the most recognizable faces in the world, but just doesn't have that passion business now. So even really that comfortability of doing short format content or proper big production stuff. He's done big multimillion dollar deals with sponsorships, but never really owned the narrative.

On Jimmy's side, though, he started out as a 40 year old kid that knew nothing about business, but he obsessed over learning, and now he's like, I think, 23. He just completely dedicated a huge chunk of time of figuring out business as it related to CPG, as it related to chocolate, and just wrapped his head around that because he had guys like me and Jim Murray, like smart dudes in CPGs that could advise him. But he wanted to see things from his perspective and do it his way, which is completely fucking different than anyone else's on the planet in such a great way. He had that dedication and obsession over figuring it out. What we look for though is like how do we then part of our job is to take these people, those profiles and build them up so they are an authority as a CEO, as a co founder, as a business person. As we think about this other athlete life after their sporting career, how do we start thinking about legacy for them? Like, what are the things that are important to them and how do we position them so it's authentic and they're not just coming across as like another cheap creator brand launching into market. That's the shit we're trying to stay really clear of. It's not just like a paid endorsement where a creator is holding a product and smiling.

That ain't what we're looking for. It's like deep within the content, deep within the DNA that made them popular in the first place. Bringing that out into product and then making them feel confident to go on the front cover of Forbes magazine and do an like with Jimmy's Forbes interview, I was there with him and it was just like, yo, Ben, is that right? Am I making this up or is that know? So it was just like creating a safe place and he would have done great without me, but just making sure that he knew his shit and I gave him that support as it related to building up his profile in business separately. So it ain't just about launching and scaling of products. It's about owning the narrative and finding out how we package them up. From being a dude that gives away chocolate factories and crazy content to actually being a smart dude and being perceived by the press and the media and his community is a really smart businessman. So Jimmy already is all of that stuff long before we came along, but he is the exception for almost all of the people we're talking to.

Ben, one question that I have that's, I guess it's moving slightly in a separate direction. But a lot of brand founders and operators, they kind of like, to your earlier point, they think about partnering up with creators. Actually one episode that I just interviewed the founder of this brand last week, Nicholas, from this brand, Matena, they were kind of like what you were talking about. They've been around for about five years. They were selling in the Canada market and then all of a sudden they partnered up with Andrew Huberman and are launching big time in the US and now are really going to scale. Right. So I think this is like a very interesting model in terms of combining a product with a slab, whether it's at inception or even if the business has a little bit of traction.

Blaine, one thing. I'm sorry to jump in there.

Get in there.

Something I find really interesting is talking about these. One thing we haven't talked about is the negotiation and compensation structure, especially when the company has already existed versus at inception. It's a very different conversation to have. I'm also very curious on that. I wanted to make a note on that, but I just found that interesting that they'd already been going for four years. I bet that negotiation conversation is very different than if they were conceptualizing it.

Well, yeah, let's go there, Ben. Like, what does it look like? You mentioned that these are some opportunities that you're kind of looking toward being able to tap into companies that already have an existing ecosystem and framework, partner up with a creator to throw some jet fuel on it. What does a deal like that look like?

Our standard deal terms are 40 40 20. There's a templated term sheet that goes out, and that's the start of a negotiation. It's obviously highly dependent on what expectations are. But 40 to us, 40 to them, 20 for the companies as we start to build out stock, executive team, and then just future raising requirements to get them through to a series A. So that's kind of like how we start to think about initial structure. It really does depend, though. We need to know, does this celebrity creator have a vision to lean in outside of just filming content once a month? Because ideally, that's what we're looking for. They know their audience and their market better than us.

We need to dig really deep into that, like extrapolate and let them kind of bring that out. We want them producing their own on the fly content, like dominating their own social, integrating into their own content, into their own appearances, whatever it looks like. So that's the expectation. When we look at a 40 40 20 type deal, the existing brands, our approach to that is like full roll up. So we effectively go out and acquire a brand usually with that kind of like three to 5 million revenue, probably a down year. Last year is kind of what we hope to see. But coming out of the gate strong with great loyal customers, initially, full acquisition, and then we kind of bolt on it. It's not too dissimilar.

Still, that 40 40 20 split. Again, on the creator side, it depends on depth, engagement, follow account, things like that. And then also, then like big vision. How big do we think we can make this thing if we know that? Because what we see is so many great DDC brands just flop on the content side. It's just the shit that's just so hard to solve. It's just not native to many people. That's what we do best. We have full content production in house, big facility.

We can launch and deploy content within very quick succession, and it's fluid to us. So we look for brands just like flop in that, but just would scream out like, viral content. Like, how do we create proper viral content and purify at a wicked celebrity and then scale up for advance? But yeah, it always kind of comes back to that initial 40 plugin slots.

We are really excited to announce that DTCpod is officially part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network is the audio destination for business professionals. And we're really excited about being part of the network because we're going to be able to keep growing the show, bringing you guys amazing guests, and obviously helping you guys learn from the best founders, marketers, and builders of the most successful consumer brands. So anyway, keep listening to DTC pod and more shows like us on the HubSpot podcast network at podcastNetwork. And I like how you guys are thinking about the types of creators you're partnering with, right? There's big celebrity, but then having a celebrity who's really content minded is different from someone who might be famous and might show up for a photo shoot here and there for a really big brand, but isn't actually a creator first, whereas Jimmy is like, he's a creator first. So he's constantly churning out content that he can feature stuff in. He can talk about it, he can talk to audiences. So I think it's also neat that as you guys pursue that with content being a core pillar, knowing that you also want a creator who's going to be able to speak to the brand and really align with it, as opposed to just like, oh, big celebrity, like one of a bunch of endorsements and maybe they take one photo op and that's it, right?

Exactly, man. It was funny, though, with feastables early on, we had to earn Jimmy, and it was frustrating early on because we'd build feastables, Mr. Beast bar chocolate, it was all around him. So we launched, I think it was escape room video. We launched Feastables, right? We came out the gate, sold 10 million bars in world record time. It was incredible. But then Jimmy didn't really lean in for that first six months, I think. I'm pretty sure he said something like, yo, get to 100 million in revenue and then I'll take a deeper look at it or something like, stupid like that.

I was like a stupid revenue in our life. I'm like, fuck. We built this whole model to not lean on, paid, not to even touch meta throughout our query. We actually ended up having to do it. But what we did is we earned the right to get more jimmy time. And I think that time will still be consistent. If we're looking at super high net worth celebrities, they will do what they do best in a method that they know we need to earn the right, usually through revenue or through hopefully creating a compelling enough product or value proposition to get their time. I don't think we're ever going to get it out of the, you know, Jimmy eventually turned around at six months.

We're like, okay, we'll do some short format TikToks and I'll put it on the Mrbeast channel rather than just the feastivals channel. So we heard that, and now he's leaning in pretty hard. So that's for context. But yeah, you kind of earn that. You build that relationship, you build the trust, you build the thing. That kind know eventually sort of becomes part of the brand with that integration.

So when it comes to a partnership, like the one, say, with Pete Davidson, with manscaped, where he's not like a co founder of the brand, how do you measure, also, he's not like a creator per se. He's not a content creator first, unless you count comedy has content creation. There's not as much data to measure. How big of a risk is this? Like, sure, it's going to be a hit in terms of brand because timing was right and all that stuff with Kim K et, but how do you measure and how do you go about those deals to derisk and evaluate whether this is a worthy investment for a company like manscaped.

So Pete invested. I think at a certain point there's gut feel as marketers. Yeah, got it. But there's certain profiles that, you know as a marketer, as a founder, that's just going to crush your brand. And Pete ticked every fucking box. Like, girls love him, guys love him. He's just funny as fuck and without humor, focus, it was just like the perfect match. I still don't think we really find anyone that's more suitable.

I think we just got to nail the frequency with that guy. A little bit more. But yeah, I don't think there's a real valid way of you can definitely go out and fictitiously put together, mock Pete up in an ad and just see how it hits in terms of that same engagement test and things like that. But there's just bangers that, you know, with gutto and that's at that scale. Further down the line, we are testing five different creator groups, all like five to 10 million subscribers that have tested conversion in the past. That we're testing who is the right fit for our new teen tween personal care brand. And we are testing that. We're testing the shit out of that.

They know what's happening. We've had approvals from their talent management, from their management to say, hey, we're going to put this creative into this ad placement with this product and it's going to be net new people. This is the demographic that the ad is going to be served to. Limited tests of like 150,000 reach frequency of one and we're just going to see what it's best. So there's a very quick way of validating who is a good creator for founders. Wanting to know who do I partner with? We're going through that now with one of my brands, drink Monday. It's a non alcoholic spirits brand. We're just testing to see is celebrity the right play here? Like, every fucking celebrity has done alk or non alk.

Is it the right fit? So we've gone rogue. We've just found ten celebrities, photoshopped them into an ad creative and let it run on paid, and we're just fucking around with seeing how it goes.

It's funny because I'm asking you these questions of analytical, et cetera, and you're.

Like, I just know in my gut.

I have experience doing this and you are one of the world's best when it comes to this stuff. And you have experience, right? You're confident in your assessment, and if you know there's probably not a better fit of a person, there likely isn't. And so it's a risk worth the gamble. So in terms of getting more analytical, I'm sure you might do in your content studio. So I would love to dive into your content studio. What is the thesis around having your own content studio and what are you guys actively working on there on a.

Day to day basis? So it's being built super early stage, but my obsession over Gen Alpha, Gen Z and the testing framework that we're building with magnetic doesn't really fly with paid. They're not on better. They are on TikTok, but they're reacting to organic content. And so if we start to form hypotheses around, like, okay, personal care, it's deodorant. We will physically mock our product and shoot a shit ton of content around that very easily. We have talent. We have our studio as a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. It's ready to go.

Lighting all set up. We're just producing like a month's worth of content in a morning and then just testing, testing, testing through organic. What we're doing at the moment now is setting up a excuse the background noise here, too, guys. If you can hear that, we are testing this or that. So created a TikTok specifically tied to this or that. And so we would tie in existing products like something stupid, like fucking snickers versus chocolate bar, this or that. And then when we bring in our own products, this or that, we're using that exact same face. The channel or the platform is known for user selection, and we're building up a ritual or a habitual use case for just selecting that and just using it as a flazar.

The other big thing we're going deep into, and this is slightly a dark area, is using snap and using classroom group threads and then infiltrating one student in each channel and then having them lead and asking A, B, or C. So we're putting in like three deodorant products, like mockups, and asking those group channels at scale. We're talking like tens of thousands of kids that we're exposed to now. Just asking them in platforms that they're native to. So things like free to us, we're paying kids on a monthly just to infiltrate their own group charts and go from there. So kind of rogue, kind of dark. Probably not something we talk about too much apart from this pod, but that's how we approach and think about content.

Yeah, I think that's so spot on. Especially the last part about being native, where the customers are. My last question for you, Ben, was going to be around. As you think about developing products, right? You've got different creators, you've got different niches, you've got different audiences. Are there any product categories that you get super excited about that you're like, this is just something that I want to build, and I need to find the right creator for this. And is there anything that you really don't want to touch? Just because you're like, that is a type of nightmare that I just don't want to get involved in? What type of products really excite you as you explore content and creators?

Oh, man, I think I've just got this unhealthy obsession with boring product categories that you can fix with content and making it cool again. You take a boring subject or a boring product and then start with content, it makes anything fun. Dude, we're looking at fucking anything from making pickles cool, like actually going deep into creating a fucking pickle brand. It's like popping at the moment, but making just boring stuff like that. Deodorant, commodity products that people are using day to day. So that's the other obsession. If we can get into a day to day ritual and form habitual use cases and loyalty to a brand, so it becomes like it gets a consumer to the point, why would I buy an axe body spray when I have this product here that talks and speaks and produces content and has carnival spectacle moments tied to it? Why the fuck would I buy these boring brands? So that's kind of the unhealthy obsession with boring. And I think that's kind of the thing we're looking at.

Taking market share of retail is probably where we'd like to end up. We get there through DTC, through the testing framework, and build initial loyalty and instantaneously purchase through DTC and Amazon. But it's really big. Grand scale retail is the objective. So it has to then fit in a Walmart or a target or a grocery store.

No, I was just going to say, and I really loved your point and I just wanted to bring it up again before I forgot, but we hear a lot of times people saying, take organic and see what works and then run it on the ad side of things, I think at the scale that you guys are thinking, and for brands that are looking to get beyond eight to nine figures, I love that framework of taking creative that wins and then going and on the studio side, really blowing it up because then you get advantage when you've already tested and validated bigger budget creative, which is something a lot of people think about and maybe won't take the right swing at. So, Ben, as we kind of wrap up here, I'd love to know, where can our audience connect with you? Where can they find more about magnetic and where can we find you on socials?

So I'm pretty stealth. I kind of go under the radar a little bit. I've just started to mess with Twitter. I'm Ben Acott, three T. So ben Acott, ttt there. I'm on LinkedIn, probably most active there. Magnetic Co is where our home is going to be. We just finished up design of the most fucked up website I've ever built and can't wait to deploy that.

It's exactly unexpected. Our whole mantra is an unconventional venture studio and you'll see that in the next week or so. And I think that's it. Again, I tend to try to fly under the radar, let the products and the brands and then the people that we partner with speak for me. So that's kind of my style.

Well, sweet. This was a bunch of fun. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thank you Ben, thanks for having me. Have a great day.