On every episode of the Rebel Instinct, our team sits down with rebels from across the marketing landscape to share stories about bold moves they’ve taken as marketers. Subscribe for more.
Galen Ettlin:
You are listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast by Acton Software for all the marketing innovators living outside the box. Let’s shake it up everybody. I’m gay Atland with Act-On Software. My co-host today is Bob Garcia, head of product marketing here at Act-On. Good to have you here, Bob. I know you’ve got 30 years of experience in the software, so your experience will definitely lend to this conversation.
Bob Garcia:
Hey all, it’s great to be here. Looking forward to talking with Marc and Galen today.
Galen Ettlin:
Excellent. And of course, as he just mentioned, our guest today is Marc Liu, Chief Revenue Officer for Civilized Cycles, a sleek e-bike company. Marc also has extensive agency experience spanning the globe, having helped market from major brands like Pizza Hut, Bud Light, Southeast Asia Tourism, and many, many, many, many more. So we’re going to have a lot to talk about, and maybe put your rebel instinct stamp on your passport. Marc, thanks so much for joining us.
Marc Liu:
Thanks for having me. That’s quite the intro.
Bob Garcia:
So Marc, you co-founded an agency Elemental that sold just recently and now you’ve pivoted into working for a really exciting up and coming e-cycle brand. How are you managing that transition from working with multiple brands across multiple verticals to now just being committed to one vertical with one really cool product in an emerging market?
Marc Liu:
Yeah, yeah, it is quite the change for me. I founded Elemental and ran it for 13 years, and so that’s a long time to be doing anything. And in the agency world, bouncing back and forth between different brands is a very different experience to being committed and focused on one brand. I will say first and foremost, it’s quite refreshing to be able to put all of my energies into one brand and really kind of dig deep into the details versus kind of bouncing back and forth. So I’m very grateful for that opportunity, a welcome change to the pace of work. And now obviously I am responsible for a lot more things, so I have to live up to the words that I put out there. I think what’s helped me a lot in that transition has been the fact that I’m first and foremost an entrepreneur at heart. And so my area of expertise is sales and marketing, and I’ve done that on the agency side for a very long time. But what I really love to do is solve problems and tell stories. And whether you’re doing that for lots of brands or one brand, fundamentally the approach is the same. You just get to do a little bit more of it when you are inside of the brand. So I’m pretty happy where I am and it’s a nice new challenge for me.
Bob Garcia:
In terms of the category, it seems like it’s so dynamic. There’s so many different types of products coming in to the market and you’re seeing, you’re really leading with creating a very elegant, high-end vibe and you’re being rebellious in how you approach that. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re starting to differentiate in such a crowded, nascent market?
Marc Liu:
Yeah, and thanks for the kind words about the bike and what we do. We are trying to do something very different for the e-bike market, which is a very exciting market to be in, especially right now in the US. I think everybody has seen during the pandemic, people started buying bikes, and e-bikes were certainly a huge part of that. And although bike sales have kind of plateaued, E-bike sales continue to remain strong because people have realized what a profound change it can make in their lives. The difference in approach that we bring is there are lots of other great bike brands out there, but by and large the way we approach it is making the best bicycle possible and then putting a motor and adding all of this electrified capability to that basic bicycle platform, which is a tried and tested model.
We are trying to do things a little bit in reverse where we’re trying to figure out what is it that people want to get out of a two-wheel experience that currently they’re only really getting from a car, and how we build that into the two wheel experience into what we can still call an e-bike, but providing car-like features, like amazing ride quality, the ability to transport people, adult passengers and large amounts of cargo. And through solving those problems, getting people who are interested in riding bikes but haven’t pulled the trigger on it yet because there hasn’t been anything in the market for them to come over to this side and really get to experience everything that an e-bike can offer. So we are trying to lead also by design and elegance because at our heart we have a sustainability mission. We want to get people out of cars and onto bikes, but we also want people to look good and feel good when they’re doing it as well. That’s a huge part of it. We saw that that was kind of the model that Tesla had established leading with their Model S and the sports car, making that kind of lifestyle desirable first and then bringing additional kind of mass market products to the consumer.
Galen Ettlin:
For you, you’re the revenue and money guy, how are you balancing that creativity with the KPI you’re measuring?
Marc Liu:
Sure, yeah. I mean revenue and let’s call it creativity or the creative aspects of the business are inseparable, especially since we’re a startup. And so every startup, our big challenge is lack of resources relative newcomer to the market. So we have to go out there and tell our story in a way that immediately makes an impact and differentiates us from the pack. And so we start with the hard KPIs that we know we have to hit in order to survive and thrive and also attract investors. And that kind of gives us the shell or the box within, we have to then deliver. And that’s really where the creativity comes from, is from those constraints knowing that we only have X amount of dollars or X amount of personnel and we have to tell this story to as many people as possible, that drives the creativity. So I think they go hand in hand and one really helps the other.
Galen Ettlin:
That’s an interesting point too. We recently had Jascha Kaykas-Wolff from Linux here, and he said a very similar thing along the lines of – the constraints are what lead to the best creativity. If you’ve got some structure, it really leads to better outcomes when it comes to that creative process. So that’s interesting that you also touched on that.
Bob Garcia:
One of the things I’m wondering about, Marc, is just how COVID has possibly evolved or impacted your approach to going to market with the new brand and such a dynamic market?
Marc Liu:
COVID has obviously impacted our business tremendously, both positively and negatively. So on the positive side, as I previously mentioned, it really spurred the demand for two wheelers as people were staying at home and now working from home more often, that kind of lifestyle becomes much more accessible and attractive. But there were also the negative repercussions of huge supply chain issues. We were actually ready to go to market in January, 2020, and we had pre-orders of the bikes that we were only able to fulfill a few months ago because we physically could not get the product out of Taiwan where we manufacture into the US. That forced us to really take the time and lay the groundwork for when we would be able to go to market. So things like making sure that we had all of our sourcing buttoned up, all of the components, so that when the demand hit we would be able to fulfill rapidly. It forced us to take the time to build the strategic partnerships and alliances that would allow us to quickly go to market, and that has borne a lot of fruit. So we’re an omnichannel brand, we sell direct to consumer, but we also sell through select retailers around the country, and we were able to access all of those retailers through the relationships that we built in our kind of furloughed period during COVID. So that’s how we made the most of the time and it’s helped us hit the ground running.
Galen Ettlin:
All right. So Marc, we’ve got some questions we like to ask all of our guests on the Rebel Instinct Podcast. What’s the most rebellious or out-of-the-box thing you’ve done and how would you say it performed?
Marc Liu:
Oh, that is a very good question. One of the things that has been a blessing in my career is that I’ve entered into markets at the beginning of their growth. And so for example, when we started Elemental, the agency, this was back in 2009, and social media and digital marketing as a whole were really just starting to take off as the primary channels of marketing for brands. We had the same learning curve as the established agencies. They didn’t know more than us and we just had to learn a little bit faster in order to compete with them for clients. And so literally when we started the agency, our initial clients were restaurants. I used to live in New York for about seven years and we acquired those clients by walking up and down Broadway, knocking on doors at restaurants, finding the ones that had the most empty seats and going in saying, looks like you need some customers.
We think that we can help you with website design, social media, maybe some Google ads, some Facebook ads. How about we do this for you for free, and if you make money, hire us and make us your agency. And the next question was usually, what’s an agency? And they’re like, okay, we will help you make money and fill these seats for you. And we did that for the first year just knocking on doors. And in a similar period in the throes of the financial crisis, people were having a really tough time financially, but they were also more open to trying new things because obviously what they were doing up until then was not working. And so I don’t know if you would characterize that as being rebellious, but certainly it was a novel approach to group building an agency, and fortunately for us it worked.
Galen Ettlin:
I’d say that’s rebellious with the door knock. That’s scary. It’s a risk. You never know if someone’s going to yell in your face or say, thank you so much for showing up here.
Marc Liu:
Oh definitely had people yell at us and tell us to leave. That happened more than once.
Bob Garcia:
So what advice would you give to marketers to be more rebellious or creative in their work coming out of that creativity that you use to drive business?
Marc Liu:
Creativity is such an interesting thing because we all know people who seem kind of naturally predisposed to out of the box thinking. And so there’s certainly a part of it that seems like it’s innate that’s born with us, but… I don’t believe that it’s a thing that can’t be taught or at least can’t be nurtured. I firmly believe that all endeavors in life require a certain amount of creativity, especially if you want to get ahead of the competition and there are muscles you can train and work on. My wife is a neuroscientist and she does research on children with autism. So in our household we talk a lot about neuroplasticity and concepts like that, concepts that really kind of fly over my head, but she knows a lot about. But because of that, I get to learn about a lot of these different concepts, including divergent and convergent thinking.
Things that have been very helpful for me. But I would say in terms of a simple approach to rebellious and more creative thinking for marketers is to take a look at what is being done in industries that are not yours or those of your client. And so for example, one of the things that we would often do as kind of a creativity hack for our restaurant clients will be to see, what are people in doing in consumer and fashion and spirits and that sort of thing. There seems to be certain repeated patterns or ways that people market those products and can we take those ideas and apply them to our industry? Can we take them wholesale or can we modify them slightly? And we all get kind of trapped in our familiar patterns and that makes us stale and is the enemy of creativity. So taking that step out and seeing what are people doing in completely different fields and asking yourself, can I make this work in my industry? That’s been a pretty good shortcut to generating some creative ideas for us, and I think it’s something that pretty much anyone can pick up and run with.
Bob Garcia:
That’s super helpful. I mean, it’s inspiring because as we work as a company to differentiate our market, it’s super important for us to not get stuck in our box and really look for inspiration externally and pull those kind of thoughts in to challenge our conventions.
Marc Liu:
That is really the trap of expertise. The better you get at something, the more you have repeated practices or patterns that work, the more tempting it is to just fall back on those because they’ve been successful in the past and that really kind of dulls the blade in terms of creativity. So building in mechanisms within your daily practices or your company’s kind of regular practices to force yourself out of that kind of familiar knowledge, I think is essential.
Bob Garcia:
I couldn’t agree with you more.
Galen Ettlin:
We’ve gotten a lot of interesting answers on this one when we’ve asked other guests this, so Marc, how are you a rebel in your non-work life?
Marc Liu:
That’s so funny because I think of myself as being a very kind of ordinary, bland, vanilla type person. I have a daughter who’s a year and a half old. Most of my time outside of work is spent with her, and we also have a dog I cook at home. It’s a very domesticated life. I do make sure that I have time for exercise. I’m a lifelong martial artist and I practice jujitsu. I have a black belt and I also practice other martial arts. I also think of myself as being very ambitious, not just kind of financially or professionally, but I think striving to have happiness in all these different aspects of my life, professionally, personally, health, spiritually. For me that’s very ambitious because I find it very difficult. I find it difficult to try to find that balance between all the different areas. Balance is one of the tricky words. There really never is perfect balance, and so you’re constantly juggling these things and negotiating between different parts of your life that are competing for your attention. And so for me, that for me is the height of ambition to really have it all in a way where I can feel satisfied that I’m not missing out on these things that are truly important to me.
Galen Ettlin:
I always love that question because people will often say like, ‘oh, I’m not that rebellious,’ and then be like, ‘oh, I’m actually a black belt’ and I think it’s a great answer. Thank you for indulging.
Bob Garcia:
That is a really great answer, and balance is so important in life because it’s so easy to get sucked into any one direction and pulled out a whack. In terms of culture and rebel rebell in our culture, what characteristics, what type of persona or attributes do we need more of to rebel from the current constraints of our culture?
Marc Liu:
The idea of a rebel is quite an interesting one for me because I didn’t grow up in America, and it definitely has different connotations here than in many other countries because of the history, because of the culture that’s been built on the backs of that history. Rebel is an important characteristics to have because the world is very fluid. None of us know all the answers to everything. Having a healthy questioning of the status quo or what we’re being told and that sort of thing is the way that we collectively solve those problems or at least start to ask the right questions to get to a place where we can solve those problems. The tricky part becomes how do you know when to question things, when to push knowing that you don’t have all the answers? And I think for me it is the confidence to question things really comes down to critical thinking.
Having the ability to honestly break down issues or problems that I’m seeing and know the limitations of my knowledge and then seek out counsel and ask people who I know have been there before, done it before, and whether it’s in business or politics or anything else, just engaging with people who might have a different perspective and a little bit more knowledge than me. By being very frank about that and not being satisfied with my own kind of initial idea of things, I think that’s where I then get the confidence to then question. Okay, what I’m seeing in front of me doesn’t seem quite right. Everybody says that this is the way that things should be done, but things don’t seem to add up, and so maybe we should look a little bit deeper.
Bob Garcia:
So humility and curiosity and the willingness to lean in and challenge convention sounds like great advice for all of us to think more about as we engage with our day.
Marc Liu:
Yeah, I mean you really need both sides of it. You need the humility to understand what you don’t know and to seek out counsel, but you need the confidence to push when you need to push. And again, trying to find that balance is that’s the name of the game.
Galen Ettlin:
Along those lines, Marc, I’m curious for you, is there a rebellious figure either here in this culture or elsewhere that you look up to or that you think is someone worth celebrating?
Marc Liu:
I’ve become a big fan of Andrew Yang and ever since I discovered him during his presidential candidacy, and regardless of whether you agree with his approach or not his politics, you cannot deny that he is promoting a different perspective on what this country needs to be doing to advance and move forward and improve things for the people. He ran as a democratic candidate initially and did not get a ton of support from the party and now has launched his own party, the forward party. So again, there are policies that I think have a lot of merit. There are other approaches that I would need to dig into a little bit further, but by and large, if you’re looking for a rebel within the state of American politics, you don’t have to look very far – pretty rebellious.
Galen Ettlin:
Makes sense. Outside the box, against the grain, however you want to put it, but not the conventional.
Marc Liu:
Exactly.
Galen Ettlin:
Okay. Well Marc, finally here it is. Time for our ‘honey, I don’t think so’ segment talking about what’s annoying you lately that needs to stop in the marketing or martex space. You have 60 seconds to make your case.
Marc Liu:
My pet peeve, and I’ve had this for a little bit of time, is the tendency for marketing people, whether it’s marketing agencies or marketing tech companies, to promote this idea that we can track and measure everything and we’ve kind of shot ourselves in the foot because technology improved and we have so access to so much data and analytics. And so we’ve gone out there and told brands clients that everything has a straight line between what you do and the ROI and it’s just not true. There are still huge gaps in the data, but even more than that, fundamentally there are things that we do as marketing and salespeople, not because they have a 10x or 20x return, but just because they’re the right thing to do. And I use the example of restaurants. If you don’t know what the ROI of sweeping the floor is, but you do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do. And so especially when it comes down to branding and storytelling, we need to make sure that brands know that those are things that you may not be able to measure but are very important
Galen Ettlin:
Right on time. Maybe one second over, but I’ll give it to you.
Marc Liu:
Okay, thank you. I appreciate that.
Bob Garcia:
I love the wisdom I’ve picked up this morning. Thank you so much for sharing, Marc.
Marc Liu:
Yeah, thanks for having me. This has been a really fun shot.
Galen Ettlin:
All right, Marc, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. We’re going to link to all of your socials in our description here of the podcast episode. So thanks again.
Marc Liu:
Appreciate it.
Galen Ettlin:
Thanks everyone for listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast. Be sure to follow Act-On Software for updates and upcoming episodes and remember to always act on your rebel instinct. Until next time.