Ruggable’s new ad spend strategy shifts focus to ShopMy creators

“We have been focused on shifting over the last 18 months is a classic: what got us here is not going to get us there,” Lauren Sherman-Kaoud, chief marketing and creative officer at Ruggable, told Digiday. 

Since last August, Ruggable has shifted about 10% of its overall spend from performance channels, like Meta, into brand channels, like influencers and connected television. The brand plans to grow that spend by another 15% to 20% next year, Sherman-Kaoud said. The CMO declined to offer a specific dollar figure for its marketing budget.

“We don’t really need to be showing up in the bottom-of-funnel affiliate networks, when ShopMy is working so well as a conversion channel for us,” she said. 

Influencer marketing used to be managed by a small team overseeing direct messages and spreadsheets. That’s now run by a single person, and those overhead costs have since been reallocated to Ruggable’s marketing mix, Sherman-Kaoud told Digigday. She did not disclose specific dollar figures.

In working directly with creators through ShopMy, Ruggable’s working media has outperformed traditional ads, and even TikTok as a conversion channel, said Sherman-Kaoud. The brand saw roughly $3 million in revenue the first month of its ShopMy partnership, the CMO added. That figure doubled the following month and tripled in month three.

Influencer marketing efforts started last holiday shopping season. Ruggable took upwards of a million dollars out of its performance budget — specifically from Meta — and pumped that spend into ShopMy creators, said Sherman-Kaoud. 

The washable rug brand has a two-pronged approach to its creator marketing strategy — affiliate marketers for scale and conversion, and brand ambassadors for things like product collaborations or bigger activations. 

Across ShopMy, Ruggable works with hundreds of creators, mostly in an affiliate capacity. The brand sets parameters around post format, content volume and which product will be promoted. Other than that, “we let them do their thing,” the CMO said. On the brand ambassador side, creators act as spokespeople for the brand, providing a “halo to the brand,” she said. The DTC has partnered with high-profiles like food personality Dan Pelosi and Spread the Jelly media company. 

“It’s sort of like a sandwich approach a little bit,” Sherman-Kaoud said. “We’ve got a massive investment there [in brand marketing], and then we use ShopMy to replace some of those worst-performing affiliate channels.”

If it sounds like traditional advertising, that’s because it is. Companies take a similar approach to media, negotiating deals with big players like Disney or Walmart while buying ads across long tail players programmatically.

Ruggable may be ahead of the curb, according to Noah Eisemann, global executive director of creator and influencer at VML. More brands, however, are starting to think of their creator strategies more holistically.

“People are just discovering efficiencies and just waking up,” Eisemann said.

Ruggable is on track to IPO over the next three years, making brand awareness a crucial part of its marketing strategy, per Sherman-Kaoud. Ruggable is in the early stages of developing an internal ambassador program to build long term relationships with interior designers and other related creators. 

Call it a matter of maturity. Early on, influencers were an earned media, PR play, he added. Now, brands are layering in performance with affiliate creators, ultimately boosting brand awareness without sacrificing sales and conversion.

It’s not a bifurcated approach, per se, according to Eisemann. “It’s just that they’re thinking about their strategy holistically and understanding that there’s different levers and tactics and scale to pull respective to the business objectives that they’re setting for themselves.”