This episode features an interview with Chris Villarreal, Global Director of Marketing for Wearables at Meta. Chris and his team build and scale programs to drive consumer education, desire, and adoption of immersive devices. Previously, he was the Head of Brand for Meta Financial Technologies, leading brand management, integrated marketing, and the Creative Studio. He has also held roles at Goldman Sachs, American Express, and Equinox. In this episode, Kailey sits down with Chris to discuss insights on category creation, the significance of solving real consumer problems, and how Meta is leveraging multimodal AI to enhance everyday life with their Ray-Ban Meta Glasses.
This episode features an interview with Chris Villarreal, Global Director of Marketing for Wearables at Meta. Chris and his team build and scale programs to drive consumer education, desire, and adoption of immersive devices. Previously, he was the Head of Brand for Meta Financial Technologies, leading brand management, integrated marketing, and the Creative Studio. He has also held roles at Goldman Sachs, American Express, and Equinox.
In this episode, Kailey sits down with Chris to discuss insights on category creation, the significance of solving real consumer problems, and how Meta is leveraging multimodal AI to enhance everyday life with their Ray-Ban Meta Glasses.
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Key Takeaways:
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“ What we're trying to do is create more and more value throughout the day for you to be wearing this wearable all the time. It goes from something that you use for a specific use case, like taking a picture or sharing your point of view or listening to something, to something you want to wear all the time, because you're actually finding utility.” – Chris Villarreal
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:14) - Chris’s career journey
*(04:09) - Trends influencing wearable technology today
*(06:20) - What differentiates Ray-Ban Meta Glasses from other wearable technology
*(13:02) - Safety and privacy guardrails around Meta’s Glasses
*(20:11) - How Chris defines ‘good data’
*(35:01) - Chris’s recommendations for those creating a new product category
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Links:
Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn
Learn more about Caspian Studios
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Sponsor
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Chris Villarreal: What we're trying to do is create more and more value throughout the day for you to be wearing this wearable all the time. It goes from something that you use for a specific use case, like taking a picture or sharing your point of view or listening to something, to something you want to wear all the time, because you're actually finding utility.
Kailey Raymond: Hello and welcome to Good Data Better Marketing. I'm your host, Kailey Raymond. In this episode, we're delving into the world of wearable technology and AI with Chris Villarreal, the global Director of Marketing for Wearables Meta. We discuss insights on category creation, the significance of solving real consumer problems, and how Meta is leveraging multimodal AI to enhance everyday life. With some surprising use cases. Chris also takes us on Meta's innovative journey to AI integrated Ray-Ban glasses, exploring the intricate marketing strategies to build consumer awareness and trust and the seamless blending of digital and physical brand experiences. Stay tuned to uncover the future of smart wearables and the marketing magic behind them.
Producer: This podcast is brought to you by Twilio Segment. Segment helps every team access good data. Data that's real time, clean and accurate. The result? Relevant customer experiences that drive real revenue. From creating more engaging customer loyalty programs to optimizing your ad spend, Twilio Segment helps over 25,000 companies turn customer data into tailored experiences. Learn more about why everything is better with good data @segment.com/gooddata.
Kailey Raymond: Today I'm joined by Chris Villarreal, Global Director of Marketing for Wearables at Meta. Chris and his team build and scale programs to drive consumer education, desire and adoption of immersive devices. Previously, he was the head of brand for Meta Financial Technologies, leading brand management, integrated marketing and the Creative Studio. He also held roles at Goldman Sachs, American Express and Equinox. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Villarreal: It's good to be here. Thank you.
Kailey Raymond: I am really excited to talk to you. We are recording this mere days after your big spots at the Super Bowl. So I'm sure there's a lot of excitement in the air at Meta Wearables and I'm really excited to just learn about that, of course, and just your marketing experience in general. So I want to start there, Chris. Tell me about how you got to where you are today in your career journey.
Chris Villarreal: Yeah, it seems planned and purposeful in retrospect, but I think honestly it's kind of been an opportunity to just find what's been a passion and an interest of mine. I started on the agency side on an iconic account, IBM at Ogilvy, and then went over to the client side and quickly found myself on a team helping launch Plenty, which was the first multi partner rewards program in the United States. And I loved that 0 to 1 experience. That experience of thinking not just about marketing but also brand strategy and visual identity and really building a brand.
Chris Villarreal: And that process was several years in the making when we Launched it. It was just an amazing experience. And I soon after went over to Goldman Sachs and helped them launch Marcus by Goldman Sachs, their consumer bank, and realized again, a 0 to 1 experience. And that pretty much solidified for me the interest in helping launch new brands and new businesses, often for companies with really strong brands already, but in new spaces. And so I came over to Meta to help launch their fintech division and today find myself working over here in wearables.
Kailey Raymond: I love that. Often when you start in your career, you always do think it's going to be this like linear journey and it's going to make a lot of sense. And the way that you told that did make a lot of sense. But I'm sure there's a lot of bumps and learnings along the way. But I like the 0 to 1 that seems to be the theme of what you're talking about and definitely what we're going to be talking about with you creating a category today with this new kind of Ray-Ban wearables that you're introducing into the market, I want to talk to you first about that market. So what are some of the trends you think are influencing wearable technology today?
Chris Villarreal: First of all, it's just exploding so fast that we're all trying to keep up. I think that what we're noticing with wearables, at least from Meta, is is that we're seeing adoption explode and faster than we expected. And I think that's partially because of AI. If you think about wearables as a category, what makes it different from, let's say a smartphone is that it's literally on your body usually. And so that relationship between the human and technology is more intimate. You're usually controlling the device in other ways. So you can use your voice, you might be able to use eye tracking on certain devices, you can use potentially like hand movements or other things like that.
Chris Villarreal: You think about a Garmin device is also a wearable. And so that category as a whole, I think, one, is really developing quickly. What we're seeing is more and more players coming in and I think that they're starting to specialize as well. So you can think about certain devices are really built for sports performance, certain devices are really built for training and enterprises. Certain devices are really built for entertainment or for gaming. And so I think that that is something that we're noticing, that we're really trying to take advantage of and also something we're trying to understand how to help consumers navigate.
Chris Villarreal: Because at the end of the day, this is a Very new category still. Yes, there are some early adopters, but a lot of consumers are asking themselves, why do I need a wearable device? Why do I need AI glasses? And that's really the job of the marketing team, is to create value enough to convince you to explore and eventually purchase and use.
Kailey Raymond: Really interesting. Yeah, the kind of, like, really specific niche use cases that you need to make sure that you're creating demand around, in many cases, it's not an easy thing for a marketer to do. And I imagine a lot of it does have to do with building that brand from really the ground up. And I'm also imagining that there's some, like, technological innovations that kind of come into this and helping you build that brand. And then I know that Meta has been investing in a lot of this. And so what are some of those key differentiators that, from a technological perspective that you're inserting into your smart glasses that are breaking away from some of the competitors that you're seeing in this market?
Chris Villarreal: You actually want to go all the way back to the first device we introduced, which was Ray-Ban Stories. Completely different name. We call those smart glasses, right? And they did a couple of things really well. One, they took pictures, they had great audio, and people really started to use them for podcasts or for taking calls. They used the glasses to take pictures and video they could share on our platforms or more privately with their friends and family.
Chris Villarreal: And when we introduced the second generation, we rebranded very specifically because we wanted to better highlight the fact that technology was becoming even more sophisticated. So they became Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. Fast forward, we now realize the more appropriate name is actually Ray-Ban Meta, and they are AI glasses as a category, and that reflects the importance of AI and how people are using the product. So, yes, they still have great speakers. From first generation to second generation, we basically rebuilt the entire hardware. And so the speakers are even more sophisticated. They have 50% more volume, and now they're designed to put sound into your ear. There's even less leakage into the external world.
Chris Villarreal: So you can be next to someone listening to your podcast or taking a call, and that person wouldn't even know it. The cameras are way more sophisticated. They take better video. They also now take it in a vertical versus landscape, which makes it easier to share on social. Where it starts to get really interesting is with all the things that AI enables. So in addition to the things like live streaming on Instagram or sharing POV video on WhatsApp, now you can look at something and Meta AI can identify for you. So a couple of use cases. One is you can translate, let's pretend you're in a foreign country to translate the menu. Meta AI can do that for you. You're at the grocery store and you need help choosing what to buy for dinner. You can ask it what pairs well with what you already have in your fridge. You could even, for example, open your fridge and ask Meta AI what to make with the ingredients in your fridge. And so you start to see how what we're trying to do is create more and more value throughout the day for you to be wearing this wearable all the time.
Chris Villarreal: It goes from something that you use for a specific use case, like taking a picture or sharing your point of view or listening to something to something you want to wear all the time because you're actually finding utility. Before you leave your house you can ask about the weather, as you're getting dressed you can ask it how to coordinate about our outfit, as you're walking down the street you can ask it to remind you of something that you see at a specific time. Or you can ask it to call a phone number for you and it can recognize that. We're now even doing live translation. You can be in a foreign country and turn on live translation. The other person is speaking another language and Meta AI is translating that for you in real time. So the more utility we put into the product, the more value we're creating. The longer someone's going to use it and get more value out of it. The stronger the word of mouth, the better we are going to be selling this product because everyone's going to want one.
Kailey Raymond: You just blew my mind with some of those use cases. I'm in this place where I'm like, I had no idea that we were in a place of real time language translation with wearables. It is incredibly cool. And I do think that typically I imagine people think about entertainment, social, as their first use cases where they might start to apply this. But you just named a whole lot of others that I think are just, you're using the word utility. You're increasing the utility of this product into a lot more day to day spaces. Looks really interesting to say. Like I'm a very curious person. I notice a lot of things happening in my neighborhood. I look down and I try to like type it into my phone while I'm on a walk with my dog. I'd ask the glasses. It's a very different and more like contextualized experience. Very, very cool.
Chris Villarreal: You could Ask the glasses then and there. And the great thing, too, is that the app records all the conversations you have so you can go back and reference them. I'll give you another example. Just because it looks like you're a plant person, you could turn around and the glasses could tell you whether or not your plant needs water based on how it's looking. And if it has a disease, you could be like, hey, Meta, like, how can I help make this plant happier? It might say, give up more water or move it to somewhere that has a little more light. Things like that.
Kailey Raymond: Okay, well, I'm seeing a lot of partnerships in your future, Chris. There's a whole lot of plant people and plant companies, I think, would be fascinated by that. So, like, all of these use cases, unbelievable where we are at with technology. I want to learn a little bit more about the AI that's actually powering these Meta smart glasses. That's allowing me to be able to translate this back into a different language or understand how to feed my plant. Like, how does that even work, Chris?
Chris Villarreal: Okay, well, think of it as Meta AI, which is you use across many Meta services, right? So you can currently go into WhatsApp, into Instagram, into Facebook, into Messenger and ask AI. That is voice AI, and that is like, you can type a question and Meta AI will answer for it or will create an image for you. The AI we're talking about here with the glasses is what we call multimodal AI, and that is where you're using different modes to create a question or a prompt, and the glasses will answer it by connecting with the cloud. And so that's why we can use voice, that's why we can use audio to help answer some of these queries or create some of these conversations. And because the glasses have the hardware of the cameras and the microphones, you can also use those as inputs.
Chris Villarreal: So, for example, live AI, which is something that we're working on, is where you can have a conversation with the glasses. I could be at the grocery store in front of the pasta aisle and say, hey, I want to make a light pasta for dinner. Which one should I buy? Meta AI could take a picture, upload and give you an answer. And then because it has context, knows where you are, knows the last question you ask, you can just talk to it conversationally and say, and which is the best pasta? And what kind of cheese should I use? And if I wanted a wine, should I pick a red or white? So there's this really casual conversation that's starting to happen, that's only possible because we're using all the different software and hardware embedded into the glasses themselves.
Kailey Raymond: Wow. Okay. It's like a little friend in your ear. Chris, I'm truly fascinated as to what's happening with technology right now. I think I'd kind of be remiss to not ask this type of question. And this isn't necessarily from an AI lens, so you can kind of take this in a couple of different directions. But what are some of the guardrails that Meta thinks about as it relates to safety and privacy that you're building in to this product?
Chris Villarreal: Absolutely. I think we all remember the first time we were ever somewhere and saw someone but looks like they were talking to themselves, but they were actually talking into a pair of small headphones like you put in your ears. So there is a level of consumer education that we have to do in making sure that we're respecting people's privacy. So Ray-Ban Metas were built with privacy from the ground up. So the first thing I would say is that in every device there is an LED light that goes off anytime you're taking a picture or a video. If you try to block that, the functionality is disabled and you can't do that. We also, in part of onboarding, make sure that people know how to use AI responsibly and how to use glasses responsibly. And so we're really focused on education and trying to make sure that we are helping people be good stewards of the product.
Kailey Raymond: Okay, very cool. So you have this light feature and it literally disables if somebody tries to turn it off or block it in any way, shape or form. Really interesting.
Chris Villarreal: Correct. If you try to tape it, if you try to in some ways, like mess with the actual hardware, like somehow disassemble it, it turns off the lens completely.
Kailey Raymond: Thank you for answering the AI question. And some of the safety challenges as well that you're making sure you're building into the product. I imagine there's a lot of challenges related to just making sure that, to your point, people know all of the capabilities within this product. So as you're kind of on this journey to new category creation, what are some of those bigger things that are on your mind that keep you up at night that are really challenging for you all to break through?
Chris Villarreal: This is what I love about this program, by the way, and this is why I love 0 to 1, because you are often having to figure out what the problems are and then solve them. I'm just going to list a couple of challenges and again, I think these are opportunities for marketers. So the first one is you're trying to create a category and own a category. So in AI glasses, we are explaining to people what AI glasses are. So that involves a certain amount of just awareness, first of all, things like the Super Bowl. Then we want to do a lot of education and consideration. So what can this product do for consumers that would encourage them to go all the way to a store or to the Internet and spend their valuable time learning more? And then at that point you want to convince them to purchase, which is, by the way, asking them to give you their hard earned money, which I think is a big responsibility. And then afterwards, after post purchase, we want to make sure that people are thinking about how do I actually use this product and get the most out of it.
Chris Villarreal: So in that, I think there's a couple of things that we think about as challenges. One is being really single minded and making sure we know what's going to drive awareness, consideration, purchase intent and retention. So what in the upper part of marketing funnels drives enough curiosity and desire to get you to take the next step? What we're doing there is a couple things. One, leaning in to some of our biggest assets. So one, as Meta, we have the best places for people to connect with each other and with people they care about, like public figures and creatives. And so we really lean into those people to help us to some degree educate but also validate the product, because creators can talk about the product in a way that feels really authentic to them. So they're both giving it legitimacy, but also talking about it and educating their own audience. And so that's really important to us because I think we listen to creators different than we listen to brands. We also really lean into the fact that we have partnership with Ray-Ban. That's huge. They are the biggest sunglass and glasses brand in the world.
Chris Villarreal: They have years of heritage. And that in itself is going to give people the confidence that this product is going to look good on them. I think we often forget that a wearable is to some degree a sense of your own identity. You can choose watch bands, you can choose different kinds of glasses, you can choose different kinds of lenses. And so we have to make this not just tech, but also fashion and style. And so we really lean into that. And so we don't try to cram every single feature we have into the beginning of a conversation with the consumer. We're trying to give them just enough and show them it's really stylish so they'll take the next step.
Chris Villarreal: Then you think about the next level, which is consideration. You really start to have to explain to people how in their daily life they're going to use this product. So in the beginning we had a lot of content that was about like vacations, like it's a natural thing to think you're going to wear a pair of sunglasses on vacation and take really great pictures of where you travel. But we also have to tell people how you're going to use this when you're working from home or when you're walking your dog, or when you're with your kids at the playground.
Chris Villarreal: And so a lot of our content in that part of the funnel is about helping people understand all the ways they can use this. We do talk a lot more about the technology there so that people know, oh, great speakers or great cameras or I can share privately with my friends and family. And so you'll see a lot more information about tech specs and what I would call more relatable everyday content. And then when you're thinking about the next phase, which is purchase, where to find this product, I'm not sure that everyone knows where to find a wearable technology. And so we educate on all the different partners we have, whether that be online or physical. And then we often will use key messages like, we offer free shipping, we offer 30 day returns, sometimes we have promotions. And so we make sure we advertise that and that's really important for us. And then the final step is post purchase. How do we get you to use a product in a way that you absolutely love it? And we'll talk about it. And so we have an onboarding experience through our app.
Chris Villarreal: We have the opportunity to talk to you through emails. And we're always trying to surface the things that we think you're going to use and love. So for example, we have an opportunity you can integrate with Spotify, iHeart radio, with Shazam. Those might not be things we talk about when we're trying to convince you to buy the product, but those are great surprise and delights that you can be somewhere out in public and say, hey, what is this song? If you have a Shazam integration in your glasses, it'll do it for you automatically without having to pull out your phone. Those are the things that the more we educate you, the more you're going to use a product. So if we see that you're already using things like audio, we'll probably talk about the other features you may not be aware of and how to use them.
Kailey Raymond: Really interesting. I appreciate you bringing me down a whole marketing funnel as well. I feel like there's an insane amount of data for you to be able to make the decisions as to how to market to somebody in each one of these stages. Let's talk about the data.
Chris Villarreal: Yep.
Kailey Raymond: So let's start with the basics. We're on a show. It's called Good Data Better Marketing. I'm wondering if you have a definition around what you think about good data.
Chris Villarreal: Yes. The difference between information and data is that data helps you build a strategy that drives business outcomes. At the end of the day, we're all here to be successful as a business. And so any data that helps you make a better decision that drives you closer to an outcome that the business cares about is what I would focus on as good data.
Kailey Raymond: And a business outcome is obviously incremental sales. And as marketers, we know how hard it is to track attribution down the funnel. I'm thinking specifically about your Super Bowl ad. It's a very large investment. We all know this, right? How do we make sure that you're taking that and making sure that this really large, broad appeal that maybe we don't have tons of information on me. Kailey, did I even watch the Super Bowl or not? All the way down to conversion of she purchased the glasses. Like, walk me through how you think about that full attribution and understanding the incremental sales, because that can feel incredibly hard to track with enough data to advocate for your programs. Walk me through that.
Chris Villarreal: So I'm going to answer that two ways and keep me honest. I think the first thing we do is let's be specific about the Super Bowl. It wasn't a Super Bowl ad in itself. It was a concerted effort to drive more awareness about AI glasses. The best way to do that was for us to do the Super Bowl and other things around it. So our campaign started weeks before the Super Bowl and will continue for weeks after because we're using that a bit as a tentpole moment to capture people's attention at a cultural moment where they're leaned in in ways that we think make sense. But then again, as I mentioned, we activate our partnerships team, our web team, our social team, our query team, are all supporting it with other activities. And that's really because we think that now is the time for us to go broader with our message about AI glasses. So we started with the business objective, which is how do we get more people aware of AI glasses and looked at the opportunities and said the Super Bowl makes the most sense versus doing something else, which could have been very different.
Chris Villarreal: So I would say that. I think the other thing I would say is that whenever the business comes to us, we're part of the business, but the business team comes to us and says we have this challenge, then we go back and say, how can marketing uniquely help solve this challenge? And that's where I think data becomes even more important. So the first thing I would say is that we have the same objectives as the business team. So if the business is really concerned about increasing the number of people who are walking into store, then we are going to try to drive store traffic. If the business is really trying to drive more attribution of Meta as a leader in innovation or AI, we have those same goals and then we come back to them with strategies that marketing can uniquely address. And the data that we need or that we ask for the data that helps explain how we're going to get there.
Kailey Raymond: Different stages of the funnel, different outcomes that you're measuring making makes perfect sense. I can't say that something that you're going to invest in at the top of the funnel is going to make me purchase that immediately because we understand that it's going to shape somebody's experience, understanding and build their intent and awareness to drive them all the way down the funnel. So I hear you. It's sometimes hard to explain to sales folks that like, downloading an ebook doesn't mean that they're going to purchase our software tomorrow. And it's like the same thing that we're talking about and making sure you're really building that intent.
Chris Villarreal: I'll give you an example though, if I can jump in though, because I do think that often the business asks, why do we have to spend money over here when we can't just drive tons of sales by doing direct response advertising? I've worked in B2B before where you get the same question. And what we do is we clearly show the outcome we're trying to drive. And if we all agree that is a successful outcome, then the way we get there is blank. I'll give you a really interesting example. So, creators, we believe deeply that creators are essential to our marketing strategy. We define creators as anyone who is active on social, who is really building and driving community on there.
Chris Villarreal: And so creators are phenomenal at helping us drive awareness. We partner with creators that we know are aligned to the passion areas and Passion interests of our target audience. We give them the product, we give them a lot of flexibility to talk about the product in a way that feels really authentic. And then we're able to measure someone who saw that content versus someone who didn't see that content. Did we raise awareness among that audience? And so we can prove this incremental awareness gain by working with creators. Based on the path that people take, you might even be all the way down the funnel be able to say, did the person you purchased from seeing a specific type of content, creator content, brand content, a web page, are they more retentive? Things like that.
Chris Villarreal: And we obviously use purchase data and we pull it up to try to make sure that we are finding the person who is most likely to purchase based on who is. Because in marketing we think the right person is blank, but the person who's actually purchasing might be different. So it's important for the information to go both ways. I got a little off topic, but let me go back to creators. We also have a creator affiliate program. We can only work with so many very large creators, but we can work with dozens, if not hundreds of smaller creators. And if they help their audience purchase a device, we can compensate them for that. So that is a way in which we are using the same tactic to drive upper funnel, but also lower funnel. It's just about structuring it correctly. Thinking about scale and thinking about how you manage that complexity.
Kailey Raymond: It makes total sense. And the idea to pare back some like click data about a creator with a certain audience that might be talking about a specific use case I think is also really interesting. So I guess I'm wondering a little bit about like once you know awareness, not as easy to do this, but once you know something about somebody, you have some more information within their customer profile. Kailey likes plants, Kaylee walks her dog, whatever. Within your, the marketing tactics, do you start to segment and personalize those audiences to share those specific use cases to them at that time, or do you allow that to be more of kind of like a surprise and delight within adoption? Like where are you and some of those audiences and segmentations within more consideration and kind of purchase stage? Are you at that level of audience segmentation?
Chris Villarreal: Well, I think what's really interesting about that question is it depends on the channel you're talking about, right? So traditional TV, you don't really get to segment your audience. You have to pick a message as you think is going to be broad enough to get everyone's attention versus if you're on a Meta channel like Instagram or Facebook, you can put in a bunch of content in there and the algorithm using Meta AI is going to determine the best piece of content. I've been in the industry long enough to remember when we started working in digital and started working in social and how transformative that felt. And we had this very linear approach to first you build awareness and then you do this and then you do that. And the truth is now the intelligence behind some of these platforms does it for you.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah.
Chris Villarreal: And so you can use Meta platforms and Meta properties like Instagram, like Facebook, and you can both build awareness and drive consideration and drive purchase. And the more variety of content you have, actually the better because you're letting the algorithm do all the work. And showing this one specific person, which the algorithm knows more about than you ever will, shows them the right piece of content to get them to do the desired behavior, whether that is learn more or purchase.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah, well, you're doing really interesting things and creating a category of really hard. Also, you work at Meta who has some of the best targeting capabilities on the market. So it's just a really interesting combination of you being able to sell the technology that you're putting onto the market with a lot of the platforms that your company owns. It's really, really interesting to think about how those two things kind of collide together in a really unique way.
Chris Villarreal: Exactly.
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Kailey Raymond: I want to hear about how you think about some of the inspirations that you take your lead from. So I'm wondering if you have any examples of companies or campaigns that you think have done it right in terms of building a great consumer experience.
Chris Villarreal: For me, consumer experience I think is a key part there. I no longer think about who has great ads. I Think about who has a great customer experience, whether you are holding a product. And I consider that a customer experience. It can be a credit card. I worked at American Express. It can be a smartphone. We all have smartphones. It can be the product that we're talking about today, Ray-Ban Meta glasses, how it feels and how you use it digitally. I especially find it interesting digitally because the app itself is brand building or not brand building.
Chris Villarreal: And so often what we do is we are passing information back from our team to the UX team, to the product team, to say, hey, we're hearing from consumers in our research that blank, they find this step frustrating or they really love this experience because then we can highlight that in marketing or vice versa. And so I would argue that anyone who's doing customer experience, UX experience right is actually really strong at brand building. They can think about really beautiful shopping experiences online, how they're a pleasure to navigate and explore. Those people are probably getting higher add to cart because you spend more time on there. Those are the kinds of things that I think are brand building as well.
Kailey Raymond: It is really interesting. I like this interplay that you're kind of sharing as well about this kind of physical and this digital experience. Really what you're building is completely omnichannel. You're making sure that you are gathering more information about preferences and things online. The experiences that they're having are mainly in the world. And then of course, the recording capabilities are creating this really interesting feedback loop for you to be able to design things that are even more personalized for this person. So all of that is a great way to ship an excellent consumer experience, because the highlight there is that that you're focusing on that individual and it's completely tailored to them.
Chris Villarreal: Yeah. What I really loved about working on this product is prior to here, I worked mainly on software, which I loved. I really loved working at American Express and I love working at Goldman Sachs. And there it was really about brand building from differentiation in a very cluttered, competitive space. And so you really have to create this emotional connection and explain why you're different both from like a function, but also a more emotional place. But here we are really thinking about all the different customer touch points. So packaging, how does the box look and feel when you get it, when you open it, even when you go into a retail store.
Chris Villarreal: So you can find Ray-Ban Metas, obviously at Ray-Ban stores, but also at Amazon and Best Buy and Target and T-Mobile and Verizon. And so when you walk into that store, sometimes you're going to be guided by an associate through an experience. How does that associate deliver a brand experience? But also sometimes they're going to be using an iPad to learn about the product. And so how does that iPad experience deliver on the brand of Ray-Ban Meta? And then how does it get you to take the next step? So I just, I love all these little places where we're trying to think about how to build the best brand and the best customer experience, because that is as important as actually using the product.
Chris Villarreal: Now, once you start to use a product and you love it, that's what I want. Like, we want total advocacy. But that whole step, I think, is fascinating. Most of us, when we're going to purchase something that's worth $300, are still probably going to go into a store to check it out, or we're going to do a lot of research online. So the person who does online research and the person who goes into a Best Buy should get the same level of information and confidence before they purchase. But those are very different experiences.
Kailey Raymond: My brain is going in a lot of different directions with that because I'm like, how do you think about controlling the customer experience across the retail network? Especially with the new category that you're creating where there's so much customer education that needs to be done. What are some of the ways that you've thought about that and making sure that if you walk into a Target or a Best Buy or Ray-Ban or online, that it feels like a unified experience?
Chris Villarreal: Luckily, we're working with amazing partners. So you think about a Target, a Best Buy, a Ray-Ban. They are experts at retail experiences. And so there's a level of partnership there that we are fully taking advantage of. The other thing we do is we work with them on shipping experiences that are going to be consistent across the board. So in most of these places, you will find an iPad demo experience at helps walk you through the product and the features. We work very closely to make sure that every retailer finds that it's working for them. But that helps us make sure that there are certain messages we're always getting across. But then you have store associates, and again, you're training store associates, you're providing in-store signage. All these partners also have dot com experiences. So someone may go to target.com before they walk into a store. So, yeah, it's just about like leveraging all the channels. And honestly, the expertise of our partners.
Kailey Raymond: Very interesting. It's a whole new world in tech with now having retail experiences for their hardware products. My mind is blown today. My last question for you tonight, Chris, is if somebody was looking to create a new product category, what are some of those, like, recommendations that you might have for them if they were to walk up and try to do this for themselves for the first time?
Chris Villarreal: I think this is going to sound cliche, but you have to solve a real problem. Consumers are busy. We spend so much time thinking about them in a very specific way as prospects or consumers of our products. But they are dealing with life, family, work, the gym, the traffic, the weather, whatever it is. And so they're really looking often for ways to eliminate friction and let them do more things that they find value that bring them joy, that bring them happiness and fulfillment. And that sounds kind of cheesy, but I really think at the end of the day, what we're all trying to do is just make sure that we have the best experience, like the best life experience. And so if your product can help solve that kind of problem, then I think you're going to be successful. If you have this really beautiful product, this really beautiful technology, but you can't help people understand why it's going to make their lives better, I think that's really challenging.
Kailey Raymond: Yeah, I love that it is sometimes as simple as that of like Marketing 101 of, oh, yeah, we are here to solve problems for people and it needs to have value and create value for folks.
Chris Villarreal: This is the wrong place to say this, but you have two ears and one mouth because we've been talking for a while, but often I think the job of a marketer is to just really deeply listen.
Kailey Raymond: And too often we don't put in that upfront research to make sure we really understand who that audience is. I feel like a lot of marketers can fall into that trap, but luckily, if you're doing it right, you have hopefully a ton of support from the data teams and everyone else to make you feel like you have that equipped for you. So, Chris, this has been great. I've learned a lot. I have a lot of thinking to do about the future of wearables and AI and the intersection of where that's going to go. So you gave me a lot to ponder about. I really appreciate the time and congrats on a phenomenal activation over the past couple of months where you've been leading up to this Super Bowl. So appreciate it.
Chris Villarreal: Kailey, pleasure spending time with you. Thank you.