Why high-growth brands must rebalance marketing mix

Nataly Kelly [00:00:00]:

Welcome to Inside Insights, where marketing strategy meets consumer truth with your host, Nataly Kelly.

Most brands spend years trying to figure out how to get consumers comfortable talking about their category. Manscaped built an entire business by doing exactly that. From awkward grooming conversations to viral campaigns and Super Bowl ads, the brand helped normalize topics that most companies would never touch, using humor, cultural tension, and consumer understanding to turn discomfort into conversation. But that creates a different challenge as the company grows. Because what works for a disruptive startup doesn't always work for a global brand.

The jokes that help you break through can also create risk. The voice that makes you distinctive can become harder to scale. And the performance marketing tactics that drive early growth eventually stop being enough on their own. That's the balancing act many digitally native brands are now facing.

I'm Nataly Kelly.

Today I'm joined by Marcelo Kertész, CMO at Manscaped. Marcelo leads global marketing, creative, digital, customer insights, PR and production for one of the fastest growing men's lifestyle brands in the world. Before joining Manscaped, Marcelo built a career across advertising, product innovation, and even presidential campaigns, helping brands and leaders understand how emotion, culture, and communication shape behavior.

Today, we'll explore how Manscaped uses humor to navigate cultural tension, what happens when a disruptive brand starts to scale, and why the future of growth may depend on rebalancing performance marketing with long-term brand building. Welcome to the show, Marcelo.

Marcelo Kertész [00:02:11]:

Thank you. Thanks for having me. And with that intro, I don't know if I can speak anymore. I'm... I'm so shy now.

Nataly Kelly [00:02:18]:

You made such a good... It's interesting and it's very good to hear a recap of the trajectory of what we've done so far and the challenges that we've faced. So I'm looking forward to the conversation. But I love the intro, by the way. Thank you.

Marcelo Kertész [00:02:34]:

Thank you, Nataly. I'm so happy to have you here. We had a great time when we met at the Super Bowl. And one of the things that I know a lot of our listeners will be curious about is the distinctive voice that you've built at Manscaped, especially using humor to talk about topics most brands would avoid. So I'd love to ask you, why was humor such an important way into the category from the beginning for you at Manscaped?

Marcelo Kertész [00:02:56]:

Well, it started as a necessity, right? So I know, like, in retrospect, we can claim it as a very, very important and strong and well informed strategic decision, but honestly speaking, it all started with necessity. We needed to talk to men about shaving their balls. And honestly, like, it is still a barrier, it's still something that makes us, you know, slightly nervous when we talk about it depending on the environment. And we needed to kind of cool it down a little bit and kind of establish that relationship where we can talk about such things.

So humor became necessary. What was then, I think, a very strategic move was our very deliberate decision of marrying the humor with this relentless and obsessive dedication to quality in every single touch point. Because it was very easy to be seen as a brand that was there for one trick. You know, a brand that was funny but didn't really deliver core premium products that, that men needed and wanted. So this combination of humor and quality then became our obsession.

And what I'm like, very happy with the approach we took is that now as we enter in the non-growin categories, which by the way, today represents 50% of our business, roughly, that humor serves a different purpose because when we go to other categories, most of them are like very stale, technical, no emotional connection with consumers. And I think our humorous voice helps bring joy to sometimes tasks and decisions in our life that are, that were boring before Manscaped came to the game.

Nataly Kelly [00:04:45]:

Yeah, that's a wonderful, wonderful origin story of how the humor became. But then tying it to quality and preserving it is really actually great that you've been able to continue to do that. And just for our listeners, what other product categories are you now in at Manscaped?

Marcelo Kertész [00:05:00]:

Yeah. So Manscaped has a couple interesting aspects, right? One is that we never only created a power tool, we always created a grooming routine. So when we have like the groin trimmer, we had the ball deodorant, we had like the, you know, the, the, the prep up wet products to go with it.

And then when we decided to move into beard trimming, face shaving, head shaving, nose, ears and eyebrows trimmers, which we offer all those products, we not only have the power tools for that, but we also have all the products that create this beautiful routine. So the pre, during and post products to do all of that. But yes, today we have a very successful beard trimmer, the Beard Hedger, like number one SKU in many of our retail partners' stores, we do have a very successful face shaving tool, the Handyman, that in very short amount of time became the number one compact shaver in, in retail as well. And also other products like the Dome Shaver for the head, the Weed Whacker which is like nose, ear and eyebrow trimmer.

And we have more coming too.

Nataly Kelly [00:06:10]:

Wow. I love that. And I love that the product names reflect things that men already enjoy and like to do. And, you know, it's so fun that you play off of all of those home improvement tools, because if you think about it—

Marcelo Kertész [00:06:23]:

Manscaped came as, you know, as men decided to take better care of their landscape and especially as it comes to hair and taming hair and trimming hair and making sure it is in the right length, right style, right level of hygiene in each part of the body. So that's where the landscaping analogy, I think, came in handy. And it all started with the Lawnmower, our flagship, most successful product that created the groin grooming category. And we are still the number one in that category, even with tough competition coming from all sides, from the big brands that decided to wake up for men's groin needs to copycats to the cheap brands that show up in all places that try to steal a little bit of our kingdom. But we have very strong products in the groin still and more to come to make sure that we defend the category we created.

Nataly Kelly [00:07:11]:

That's great. It's great that you have such a brand vocabulary that started out with the brand name. It's wonderful. You've built all these enduring messages and assets from it and product names.

So I wanted to ask you something that we talked about before when we met in person, and it's about the difference between consumer insights and human insights. How do you think about that distinction, Marcelo, and why does it matter for marketers?

Marcelo Kertész [00:07:35]:

Yeah, I mean, the way I see it is not forgetting that behind the data, there's people, and people have their behavior and their quirks that sometimes just data won't capture. Right. It needs more. It needs a combination of different sources and observation and even going to consumer's house like we do, oftentimes to watch firsthand how they take care of themselves and. And what it means, you know, to be a man in 2026. And we have great examples in our communication that I think make this in a very, like, elegant and humorous way. It's kind of a nod to men that we understand men and we understand what it means to be a man and the. And the quirks that come with it.

I remember we had a campaign that we launched for the groin in 2024 called The Boys, which we represented men's, you know, private parts with two mini versions of that person. And there are a lot of situations I invite you to watch on YouTube or wherever you want to watch. It's called Manscaped The Boys. It has those situations where we know how men feel about that specific part of their anatomy. And we show like that your boys deserve better care.

And also, you know, what comes as a reward with that. But, but that's all based on human observation, on understanding, you know, understanding the little things that sometimes would not come from purely consumer insights.

Another great example is actually the Super Bowl ad, right? Like with the Monster Hairball Ballad. It came from a very kind of human insight of, you know, if we think about it, we. We love hair. You know, hair makes us. We style hair.

When we are in a romantic relationship, we like to touch each other's hair. There is even a Brazilian word called cafuné. It's a specific word to mean that means making just like touching other—the other, like the loved one hair in a nice soft way to make them feel good. That's how deep we go on appreciating our hair.

But then the moment, the split second that the hair gets detached from our body, it automatically becomes the grossest thing on the planet. Like we look at loose hair in a drain, in a clump as a gross thing and we forget that just seconds ago it was our beloved hair in our head or in our beard. So that's where the Monster Hairball Ballad came to life, is by observing that. And hey, what if we shift the lens to the hair's point of view and how they feel about being detached from the body? Especially because Manscaped is the pretty brand that is responsible for making that happen.

So anyway, that's just like a couple good examples of human insights being such a rich territory for us, especially for a brand who wants to connect with consumers at an emotional level. Understanding. Understanding men and not just talking about tech specs, RPMs and ceramic blades and those things that are part of our lexicon. But, you know, it's not what creates meaningful connections. Right.

Nataly Kelly [00:11:19]:

Making it more personal and capturing the emotional side of it. That is really brilliant. I love that ad. I loved it and I hope you keep airing it. It's just so fun.

Did you continue to air that ad after the success?

Marcelo Kertész [00:11:33]:

Yes, yes. You'll see more. You'll see more of those monsters coming in throughout the year on the holiday season as well. So, yeah, we have more coming on that front.

Nataly Kelly [00:11:41]:

Distinctive brand assets. I love it. Yes. Wonderful. Well, there's another campaign that I thought was very interesting that I wanted to ask you about, and it's something—Send Face Pics Instead.

Marcelo Kertész [00:11:55]:

Yes.

Nataly Kelly [00:11:56]:

And this feels like it's doing two things at once. It's using humor to tap into a culturally loaded tension while also signaling Manscaped's shift from groin focused grooming to a broader lifestyle brand. So how do you know when a creative idea is strong enough to carry that strategic weight for you as a marketer? And how do you make sure that the humor doesn't overshadow the message?

Marcelo Kertész [00:12:20]:

Yes. So to answer your first question, you know, how do we know that it's a strong idea is when it makes us nervous, right? Especially for a brand like ours where we don't have the deep pockets that most of our competitors have. So our creative needs to work harder for us. They need to make an impact.

But at the same time, making an impact also means getting closer to a risky place where—where especially in today's culture, things can go to the wrong side. So we need to make sure that our message is on the right side of issues, even when there are tricky issues like the Face Pics idea, which talks about something that's happening in the world today where people sometimes share images of their private parts. And for some people, this is a very hard topic. So it's not something that we can just take lightly and hope for the best.

So we needed to make sure that we were on the right side of that issue. And we had such great feedback with this campaign, but it is—it is a campaign that makes us more nervous. But like you said, there's a couple things that this does to us. One is we knew that most people that knew about Manscaped still knew us from the groin, right?

So we knew that if we just ignored that as a starting point, it might fall flat in a lot of people that heard about Manscaped, they will not see the connection and maybe even see, is that the same brand? Am I hearing from a different brand? Like, what's the deal there? So we wanted to not only make sure that we had that connection established, but also, you know, using the fact that a lot of people know us from the groin grooming to take that leap with us to the face. Right.

So when we came with Send Face Pics Instead, it started with this human observation, like you mentioned, but then we dug in deeper to make sure that even scientific data points were pointing that this was the right thing to do. So one very interesting aspect of this campaign is we tried to figure out if there were scientific academic papers on that behavior of people exchanging photos of their private parts. And we found this group in Canada that studied that. It's called the Orgasm Lab. That's an acronym.

But they're a very serious group, despite the name—might for some people be misleading, but they do this very deep academic research on that behavior. And they had hard data to show us. Like, for example, when we say in our campaign that sharing a picture of your face is proven to be nine times more effective in engaging in a conversation or a future romantic relationship than sending a picture of your nether parts. It's scientific data. It's actually a study that was done.

It's not just the brand trying to be funny, but even that tension with using science to talk about that creates humor and creates a humor that is still, you know, makes our dollars work harder because it is—it is something that's catchy, but makes sure at the same time that we are on the right side of things and we are promoting a better behavior for men in general.

Nataly Kelly [00:15:48]:

And it's tapping into that—using, using facts to basically say, use this product, because X. You're implying that the results will be better.

Marcelo Kertész [00:15:56]:

Yeah. Yes, yes. Because together. Together with this, there's a message of, hey, Manscaped now takes care of your face too, so you can proudly share photos of your face and images of your face. And we created this video piece that was our most viral video up to date.

Before even putting any dollars behind it, it had gathered more than 60 million views.

And for me, in my six years at Manscaped, you know, being from Brazil, it was the first time that people were pushing back to me the content, even from Brazil, the content of that campaign with that viral video. And that video is a beautiful story of a guy who is about to take a picture of his private parts, but he accidentally shares a picture of his face and his life takes a different direction. He gets married, he has a kid, he has a beautiful life. And then it goes full circle when his kid is becoming a man and is starting to engage in romantic relationships, and he has an opportunity to point him in the right direction too. It's a very emotional and funny story at the same time.

And yes, it's the Send Face Pics Instead campaign at its best.

Nataly Kelly [00:17:17]:

Wow, that's an amazing example, Marcelo. Thank you for sharing it with us. I know. Speaking of, you know, you mentioned that that went viral before you even put behind it.

But Manscaped has also been built in a very performance driven D2C environment. What made you realize the company needed to rebalance more toward upper funnel brand building as it got bigger?

Marcelo Kertész [00:17:39]:

Yeah, no, that's. That's a very good question. And it's a very—like when I became CMO at Manscaped because I started at Manscaped taking care of creative product design, packaging, everything on the creative side. And then a couple years in I was, I was offered to take on the role of CMO. And at that time it was exactly when I was already seeing the signs that we needed to shift directions. And I decided to do a super deep dive on the direct-to-consumer phenomenon in general. Because I do think that sometimes we forget to remember that D2C is still pretty fresh, pretty young, right?

It's a 15 year old phenomenon depending on how you count. And I wanted to see what was the trajectory of most companies in that space, even like the D2C darling of the early eras. And I quickly realized that it was very hard to scale. Like D2C had a very strong cap in, in, in like how much it could grow. And I knew that this was not to the size of our ambitions or expectations.

So I needed to figure out a different format. And then when you think about it, performance marketing, as it is designed by the sheer logic of it, it's very hard to scale beyond a certain point. It is a perfect and wonderful tool to break through. So if you have a starting brand like Manscaped was in 2018, it allows you to show up at the same quality as a $10 billion company like Gillette or other companies. It allows you to show in equal terms because on your site, in the place where you control and tell the story and showcase your products, there's no barrier.

Like trying to enter retail as a startup company is pretty hard. So it is perfect to break through. But it's very hard to scale because it is designed to put your ad in front of the most likely to convert person. So by pure logic, as you grow, it becomes less likely, less likely and it needs more push and more dollars and more money and, and, and then together with that, D2C itself and performance marketing was starting to get harder. You know, with the limitations on cookies and privacy laws and all those things that made it more expensive.

So it became immediately clear to me that we needed to do a big shift towards putting more focus on retail and marketplaces because that's where growth will come from. D2C has a very strategic place in our company and in our brand. It's still the place where you show up at your best. It's for people who want to know more about the product and the company and the stories. It is the place to go.

But we cannot rely on D2C and performance alone to grow like, and to grow again to the size of who we want to be.

And even if you think about it in your personal life, like how many products do you buy directly from the manufacturer's website? Right. It's only for those very passionate few who, if this is an area that I'm very passionate about, it makes sense for me to go and visit a website. But for most consumers, it's much more natural and frictionless to be walking at a retail aisle. And hey, I heard about those guys.

I heard, I like them. I think they have great products. They're funny. I'm going to buy their products. So that was one of my very first mandates as CMO was to lead that transition from a D2C first performance company to an omnichannel full funnel brand.

And at the same time from a groin first company to a full grooming. So those are the two things that I wake up and look like, okay, what am I doing on this direction for Manscaped? And we had great progress in both ends in this last few years.

Nataly Kelly [00:21:10]:

Wow, that's excellent. Expanding both category wise and across distribution channels. And that's a lot, a lot of expansion. And I know there's been global growth as well. So, so I, you know, talking about that performance marketing aspect that you touched on, Marcelo, a lot of marketers still frame performance marketing and brand marketing as opposing forces. So how have you managed to make those two approaches work together instead of against each other?

Marcelo Kertész [00:21:36]:

Yeah, no, and that's, that's a very great, great question because you know, people have different ways of talking about performance marketing and digital marketing and like, what does it really mean? Right. So for example, when I'm referring to you, to performance marketing, I am more referring at this bottom of funnel conversion led digital initiative. Right. But if you talk about the performance marketing typical channels, they can do all, like, they can deliver all parts of the funnel. And today if, if you look at our media mix profile, it doesn't, it didn't change drastically.

But the way that we deploy the media and what are the goals of those campaigns that, what changes quite significantly, like deploying a conversion campaign and a reach campaign in the same platform is very different, both on the content that you put out there and then on the metrics that you set for those campaigns to be successful. And I agree with you, there's a lot of confusion on, you know, performance digital, the ch, the media channel versus like the intention of what part of the funnel you're trying to hit. And you need to be very deliberate when you're, when you're planning because although there are channels that are more prone to one part of the funnel versus another, there are a lot of mediums that will flex throughout the funnel. You just need to make sure that you are setting the right objectives and the right content for that.

Nataly Kelly [00:22:51]:

That's such a great point. There is so much confusion out there and, as you said, sometimes people conflate performance with non-brand campaigns when actually you can use those channels for brand campaigns as you described, so for reach goals and awareness goals. So that's great. Great.

So I have another question for you, Marcelo. So as the business started to expand into retail and marketplaces and international markets, how did the consumer journey become more complicated for Manscaped and how did that change the way you think about marketing and customer experience?

Marcelo Kertész [00:23:22]:

Yeah, I think the most complicated part of that transition is actually learning to lean on new metrics. Right. One of the aspects of performance channel that makes it very sticky is this ability to have a faster and more objective measurement of the results of your marketing investment. And I think for us as we become full omnichannel and deploy full funnel campaigns, it becomes harder and harder to know which specific media channel, which specific message is delivering your performance, like your metrics and your goals. So it, you need to zoom out the lens a little bit in my opinion and take a look at things not only in a larger scale in terms of timeline.

So you're not going to look at that seven day window attribution, you're going to be looking at, you know, two months, three months, six months of how the campaign is affecting. But at the same time you're going to have to look at more of like how your brand and sales are performing in general versus trying to detect each specific channel, how it's performing. Of course you will always look at that, but you need to zoom out because in a, when you start deploying omnichannel campaigns like even on digital mediums like we discussed, we, we need to, to understand that the consumer journey might be very different and they might, you know, hear about you on a podcast, check you out on Amazon and buy at Walmart. And for us there's nothing wrong with that. We, we want to make sure that we have that as much presence in all the channels as we can.

We want to make sure that we are as frictionless of a purchase journey as possible in any channel and start looking at how the brand is performing in an omnichannel way. Right. Still fine tuning for the channels that we have data to make sure that we are delivering the best but more and more zooming out again both in time and in scope and not being as obsessed with, you know, the daily metrics as we have been in the early, in the early years. Because that's how we were kind of fine tuning our marketing on the early days. It was very hands on keyboard, you know, every 15 minutes changing things and tweaking and making it better.

It needs to take a more kind of, it's an exercise in being calm too, which is hard.

Nataly Kelly [00:25:42]:

Yeah, right. Because when you're smaller you have to be nimble, but when you're bigger you can overreact. You know that as they've scaled as well. So yeah, that makes total sense to me.

That's a great insight. I have one more kind of bigger picture question for you. When you think about other high growth brands that are trying to scale right now, and I know we have a lot of listeners in that category, what's the biggest lesson that you've learned about growing without losing that personality and authenticity that made consumers care in the first place?

Marcelo Kertész [00:26:12]:

It's not new news, but it's never enough to say it right. It's not trying to please everyone at the same time, meaning not having a brand voice.

We know that we have, you know, our humor approach. We know that we skew younger because of that and also other aspects of the brand. And we know that if we try to please everyone and just, and just, you know, be nice to everyone, we are going to lose our brand voice and we are probably going to become irrelevant quickly. So when we shift from the groin, which was heavily dependent on humor and we went into category, we went to categories that were way more conservative by definition. We did not try to mimic our voice to how the category was.

We understood that this, our, this is a category that probably needs innovation. The brands around us are all like a hundred years old. And we believe that there is resonance with our consumer and that we can keep our voice and actually use that as our differential. And I think we are doing pretty well. Like right now, a lot of people don't know, but Manscaped is the number three brand in U.S. electric.

So this is a big deal. We are talking about a brand that's nine years old competing with, with a lot of centenarians. I think if I'm not mistaken, the younger in the group is 79. Everyone else is over 100. So bringing that humor, that sense of humor, bringing that sense of quality, like I said, the binomial of quality and humor to that category, I think it's proving to be successful.

But yes, like there, there will be people who will not appreciate the humor, will want to buy based on tech specs and seriousness. Maybe we are not the brand for them. And I think that's a very important message as you're trying to scale because scaling means talking to more people. So it's natural that you think about, hey, maybe we need to tone down and maybe we need to dilute our voice and maybe we need to, to try to please everyone. But that's as counterintuitive as it might be.

In my opinion, that's actually the opposite of what will make you grow and scale because it's a very noisy world right now. And to cut through the noise, you need to have a point of view, you need to have a voice and yeah, and need to have a stance.

Nataly Kelly [00:28:19]:

That's right. And you can't give up that consistency either that you've built over time in the consumer's mind. So even, you know, and it's so interesting how adjacent exposure to the brand may still, you know, crossover categories. So that's great insight from you, great wisdom. I hope it will help a lot of our listeners.

Marcelo Kertész [00:28:36]:

No, and the—just a really quick on the consistency that you, that you talked about, that's also something very important. Like consumers have expectations on your brand and of course you need to balance that with the need to innovate as well and bring new things. It's not all the time that you cannot ask your way through bringing innovation through consumers. But at the same time, if you break that expectation, it might create a tough moment. I think we are seeing right now with this new Ferrari that they launched, like this electric Ferrari. I think that's a great example that will be studied over and over of did they go too far? Did they break the expectations of their consumers too much?

Trying to, you know, to be something that maybe they're not or they're not ready for, that alienates consumers. So, yes, it's a great point on the, on the consistency in terms of knowing what people expect from you. And if you want to innovate, make sure that you are doing that in the right dose and in the right direction too.

Nataly Kelly [00:29:27]:

Yeah. And for those older brands, it's even more years of consistency and breaking from it is maybe even a little harder. So hopefully both the disruptive brands, challenger brands and the legacy brands can take something from this.

So now, Marcelo, I have some lightning round questions for you, where I'm going to ask you quick hitting customer insights related questions. Are you ready?

Marcelo Kertész [00:29:48]:

Yes.

Nataly Kelly [00:29:49]:

Okay. What's one thing that brands still misunderstand about humor in marketing?

Marcelo Kertész [00:29:53]:

I think how powerful humor is for humankind. Like, if you look into humor, you see that is one of the most powerful tools for so many things, from soothing pain to establishing trust.

Nataly Kelly [00:30:05]:

Great point. What is one sign a brand has earned real cultural relevance?

Marcelo Kertész [00:30:11]:

Well, I think it's when you become, like, when you don't have to pay to play and you show up in TV shows and movies and podcasts, and people use your brand as a reference for whatever you do. And we have great examples at Manscaped. I actually have—I put together recently a reel of all the cultural mentions of Manscaped that were not driven by us. And it's funny because some of them, I myself had to ask the team again, are you sure we didn't pay for this? Because it's so great. Like, there was a segment, like long segments on podcasts making fun of our ads, but in a good way. So anyway, that's, that's—for me, is when you know you're doing something right in culture.

Nataly Kelly [00:30:56]:

Oh, that's wonderful.

Marcelo Kertész [00:30:57]:

That's wonderful. That's earned.

Nataly Kelly [00:30:59]:

Yes. It's at the highest level. That's great.

What's one consumer behavior insight that most marketers overlook?

Marcelo Kertész [00:31:06]:

What I see in a lot of brand activations is this not connecting with the human element and speaking from a unilateral way and just talking about your brand and not understanding that this is a conversation. The way I think about it is you probably been to a party where there's a group of people and there is one person who can only talk about himself forever and never listen to what other people are saying.

And you see how people slightly start to, hey, I need to go get a drink, I need to use the restroom just to get away from that person. I think no one loves this unilateral talking about yourself. And as much as you need to present your products and your proposition, trying to engage in a conversation and not have this monologue about, you know, who you are.

Nataly Kelly [00:31:46]:

That's a great analogy. I love it. What is one creative risk that turned out to be worth taking?

Marcelo Kertész [00:31:52]:

I think Send Face Pics Instead, that we—that we mentioned. You know, I got—one of the best feedback messages I got was from a C-suite person at Save the Children International, and she sent us a long message on how sometimes it's a brand like ours, who could arguably benefit from that behavior, that is actually speaking up and promoting good behavior. And that a lot of times it's way more effective than an NGO or government campaign. So I think, I think that's a, that was a very risky moment because we know it's a topic that we cannot, you know, be too light about it. But, but that, that paid off.

Nataly Kelly [00:32:31]:

Wow. I love that. That's an unexpected source of praise, really. But I think, you know, the, the message that you're driving to was a very human insight about what people actually want. To be happy and to be fulfilled and show him guys like. And that's another thing too.

Marcelo Kertész [00:32:48]:

We were very, very careful not to be preachy, not to be from the, hey, we know things. It's more like, hey, here's maybe, you know, older brother advice. We've been there. Maybe if you try something different, you'll be more successful.

But not trying to be preachy, not trying to come from a place of like, we know better or we are best or because we don't think about ourselves that way. One thing that we talk internally at Manscaped a lot is that we take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves too seriously ever. Because then we lost our tone of voice.

Nataly Kelly [00:33:18]:

Wow, I love that. That's great. So what's one thing brands should stop doing if they want to sound more human?

Marcelo Kertész [00:33:25]:

Well, I think being careful in how they use AI because it will detach, I think, human emotion. AI is an amazing tool. We have very effective and efficient usage internally at Manscaping in all parts of the company and the brand, but not losing who's in control and the human in command.

Because in the end, the more that you think about brand messaging as from a human to a human, and then you craft your message this way, I think the less risk you have of not connecting or sounding flat or mechanical or just, like I said, feature based and all those things.

Nataly Kelly [00:33:57]:

Definitely. So before we let you go, Marcelo, we have one last question that we ask all, all our guests. What's the one thing that marketing and insights teams need to do together to help your company win with consumers and grow their business?

Marcelo Kertész [00:34:10]:

Listen.

That's the word. Like, it's listen, listen and listen and listen. But be careful on, on how and for what you're trying to listen to. One question that we do have, like, internally a lot with our Consumer Insights team is what are we trying to learn right when we, when we open our ears to the consumer, what are we trying to learn? Because a lot of times I still see people going for consumer insights as a way to avoid making decisions as if your consumer knew everything that you know that you could be doing or offering.

So it's kind of taking as much information as you can, but making sure that you transform this with a point of view and not just trying to, you know, put it all on an AI platform and say, hey, what this is telling me, let's do what consumers are plainly telling me. Because you're not going to find your answers there.

Nataly Kelly [00:34:57]:

Yeah. It's listening with a purpose. Right? Listening with intention. I like that you give that feedback. It's like you don't listen to every single thing because not all of it matters. It has to be listened to with your strategy in mind.

Marcelo Kertész [00:35:09]:

Totally.

Nataly Kelly [00:35:10]:

And we have great examples where in the popular vote, let's call it, they were pointing to a certain direction, but we knew for other reasons, and we could see through what we are kind of asking that, yes, actually, people might be saying that, but we capture, because we have a more complete look, that this is not the best direction for us. And let's go the other way. Those are harder decisions because you don't have the data points to back you if things go south. But those are usually the decisions that really make an effect.

Marcelo Kertész [00:35:34]:

Yeah.

Nataly Kelly [00:35:35]:

Those calculated risks. We know the consumer saying this, but they don't know that we're thinking this.

Marcelo Kertész [00:35:40]:

Yes. Yes. We might not have time to ask them another question.

Nataly Kelly [00:35:44]:

Exactly. Yeah. Or even sometimes you don't have, you know, what you're going to propose to a consumer, either a product or a content piece, you know what you're going to propose, but you don't have it ready. So they can react to the actual thing. And then what you're asking is so far from what you know you're going to deliver that you need to make that translation yourself.

Marcelo Kertész [00:35:59]:

Right.

Nataly Kelly [00:36:00]:

You can't just expect them to make those choices for you.

Marcelo Kertész [00:36:02]:

Totally, totally.

Nataly Kelly [00:36:03]:

Makes sense. Well, Marcelo, thank you so much for a wonderful episode—that wraps up this episode of the Inside Insights podcast today.

Thank you, Marcelo, for joining us. If you'd like to contact Marcelo, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or at insideinsightspod.com or you can visit his company website at manscaped.com. If you haven't subscribed yet and want a regular stream of research and insights knowledge in your podcast feed, hit that subscribe button in your podcast app or follow us on YouTube.

Okay, that's all for today. We'll see you on the next episode of Inside Insights.