From Startup to Global Brand: Scaling with Strategy and Heart

Are you ready to boost your company's revenue and growth? Join us on this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast as host Kerry Curran dives into "From Startup to Global Brand: Scaling with Strategy and Heart" with Amanda Knappman, a marketing leader with 20 years of experience. 

Discover the strategies Amanda used to scale Peace Out Skincare from a startup to a global brand featured in major retailers like Sephora and Ulta. Learn about the importance of a strong brand identity, community building, omnichannel marketing, and leveraging influencers and user-generated content to drive sales. 

This episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable advice for business leaders eager to elevate their growth strategies. Don’t miss out!

Transcript

Podcast Guest: Amanda Knappman

Host: Kerry Curran

Topic: From Startup to Global Brand: Scaling with Strategy and Heart

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, the ultimate resource for business leaders eager to elevate company growth! I'm your host, Kerry Curran, and today we are diving into "From Startup to Global Brand: Scaling with Strategy and Heart."

Joining us is Amanda Knappman, a visionary marketing leader with 20 years of experience in the industry, including nearly 15 years in beauty marketing and brand management. Amanda has worked with renowned brands such as Procter & Gamble's CoverGirl and Max Factor Cosmetics, Amore Pacific's luxury skincare, and is currently the President of Marketing at Peace Out Skincare. Peace Out Skincare is a prestige brand known for its innovative acne solutions, including their patented pimple patch.

In this episode, Amanda shares her journey of scaling Peace Out Skincare from a startup to a global brand available in major retailers like Sephora and Ulta. We'll explore the strategies behind their explosive growth, the importance of maintaining a strong brand identity, and the impact of community building and omnichannel marketing. Amanda also discusses how leveraging influencers, creators, and user-generated content has helped them build a loyal customer base and drive sales.

Whether you're looking to scale your business, enhance your brand strategy, or understand the power of community and influencer marketing, this episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable advice. Let's get started!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.182)

And welcome Amanda. So please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.

Amanda Knappman (00:07.481)

Yeah, so thanks so much, first of all, Kerry, for having me on your podcast. Super excited to chat with you today. And as I know some of your other guests, we go way back. But to tell you a little bit about myself, I've been working in marketing for about 20 years now, specifically working in beauty marketing and brand management for almost 15 years, starting my career at Procter & Gamble, working CoverGirl and Max Factor Cosmetics, eventually taking that into some additional digital roles, making a big switch into working at Amore Pacific, working in luxury skincare, fragrance. And then a few years ago, ultimately made the switch to start working on smaller founder -led startup brands. And so today I'm the president of marketing at P South Skincare.

We are a prestige skincare brand and everything is all about offering products for acne prone skin. We're best known for our, what we call our OG, our original acne healing dot, which is the only clean, medicated, patented pimple patch.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:25.046)

Amazing. Actually, I was at my dermatologist's office today and the dermatologist was wearing one. yeah, yeah.

Amanda Knappman (01:31.649)

Fantastic, we love that. Yeah, that's, for age, I mean, I still have lots.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:37.446)

Yeah. I know. So yeah, it's, I love the story behind Peace Out Skincare. And like you're saying, it is a prestige brand. It's, you know, present at Sephora and other major beauty retailers in addition to selling it directly. And I know there's a lot of story and strategy behind that. So share a bit about what you've taken on over the last few years and how you've really built up the brand and kind of where it's come.

Amanda Knappman (02:15.481)

Yeah, absolutely. So P -SAL was originally founded actually in 2016 by founder and CEO Enrico Frezza. He's still with the company, still founder, CEO. And we first launched into actual retail in 2017. So we just celebrated our seventh birthday on the 4th of July. and the brand was really built around establishing …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:37.313)

Wow, very exciting.

Amanda Knappman (02:45.613)

… fun, easy, simple solutions for acne prone skin, starting with that Oatly pimple patch. Over the years, the brand has expanded to many other products, continued with a huge amount of acne products, but also started expanding into some other areas, pores, eye products, even age -delayed products.

Last year in 2023, one of the things that we realized was really going to be important for us because we had had such insanely fast growth. Like you were saying, it started selling in Sephora in 2017. Now we're in Sephora in the US and all over the world. We sell in Ulta, we sell on Amazon, we on our own DTC. We also sell at a number of beauty retailers. Such fast, explosive growth, I think, is very exciting.

Sometimes you need to take a pause and say, hey, are we still kind of representing who we are, you know, really being true to our brand name? So, it was very much about let's take a moment and really make sure we are clear on who we are, what we stand for. And so, it became a laser focus for us last year to say, we're a little concerned, you know, we really see an opportunity to increase …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:42.378)

Mm-mm.

Amanda Knappman (04:10.349)

… the number of new users coming into the brand, we still see that there's tons of opportunity to drive brand awareness. And the answer to that was we go back to our roots. We focus on acne -prone skin. We focus on making sure that we're providing education, information, and expertise on products for acne -prone skin. And we make sure we're really highlighting and hearing our original and hero skew product, the OG Dot, because that has …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:30.656)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (04:39.401)

… always been the number one trial vehicle to acquire new users into the brand. So that was the entire kind of focus last year. And what's really exciting is having that kind of North Star basically go back to our roots, go back to our DNA as the path for how we continue to grow is now we're seeing that pay off in a big way, not just from kind of your kind of marketing metrics, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:47.626)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (05:09.027)

… from sales metrics.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:10.666)

Yeah. No, I love that story and example because you're right. It just reiterates the importance of having that strong brand and branding voice and identity as your foundation to scale. it brings it back to, like you were saying with Enrico and his own kind of story and why he started the company in the first place. definitely.

Definitely love that aspect. And I think it was so smart and strategic. you know, like we were saying, it's because of a lot of the marketing that your team, you and your team have done, it's that it's really become more normalized. Like you're saying to see the dots, people wearing them. And it's, you know, I think a lot of that is connected to the, you know, the marketing and branding strategies that you've.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:06.275)

… that you've undertaken. So definitely, you've definitely driven a cultural shift.

Amanda Knappman (06:09.081)

Absolutely.

Amanda Knappman (06:13.667)

Well, I mean, yeah, I think hopefully we feel we've been part of it, but we've also been from it. So, I mean, when Enrico started the company, it came from the fact that he struggled with acne so severely when he was younger and didn't have anyone at the time to help him understand what to use. He didn't have an easy solution. And it was a little bit, you know, kind of a stigma to go out in public. I mean, when we were younger, I didn't want to go out in public.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:39.69)

Yeah. Yeah. Or if you did, I was thinking about this today, you would be caked on with like an inch of foundation trying to hide it, which doesn't hide it. So it's like, yeah.

Amanda Knappman (06:43.221)

I think ...

And now, I mean, people feel very comfortable going out with no makeup or with acne patches on, or even with stickers on. it's become a form of self -expression. It's very accepted. It's this kind of acne positivity or skin positivity we're seeing, which is fantastic. When was the most important thing to worry about? Yeah, when you're younger.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:01.482)

Yep.

Yeah, no, I love that. Right? Definitely. I know. So talk a bit about your omnichannel strategies. I know you have a lot of experience in the media side of this as well. So tell a bit about what you kind of led for your team.

Amanda Knappman (07:37.537)

Yeah. So, it's funny, Pissout was historically actually a very strong brand, especially during the pandemic, like I'm sure many others on the online environment and the online store. And especially coming out of the pandemic, there's been such a dramatic shift of sales going back into the store. And we have an overwhelming percentage of our sales actually coming from brick and mortar. However, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:46.962)

Mm -hmm.

Amanda Knappman (08:07.713)

I think actually what the pandemic would teach us is they're, now, consumers, as we know, are everywhere. They shop everywhere. They engage with information and content everywhere. One of the most predominant places is on social media. And so the approach that I really encourage the team to take and that we've taken active steps in crafting.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:25.514)

Yeah.

Amanda Knappman (08:34.163)

To ensure that we do have an omnichannel approach. We need to figure out how to get the right message, the right consumer at the right time. So whether that's in store, whether that's online, whether that's in our own platforms like email, it all plays together. And I'm really excited because then just let's take paid social only for a second. Even if we're just talking about meta and TikTok or YouTube.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:53.43)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (09:03.085)

We even see those as having different kinds of roles within even a consumer's journey. So even those play together for us. So it's been really exciting to think about how all these pieces work together, especially because again, we know the consumer is not shopping only at one store, you know, at a specific time. they like one website, mean, obviously we're sold in all these places. So we know that there's going to be … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:09.524)

Yeah. Right, right. Or one website. Yeah.

Amanda Knappman (09:31.179)

… some changes in shopping behavior and general shopping

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:35.092)

Yeah, no, that's definitely true. And so I know you talked a lot about the community strategy and going beyond just a lot of the paid opportunities into more earned and owned. So talk a bit about how that's really driven a lot of the strategy.

Amanda Knappman (09:55.097)

So we've been established for seven years. We've been on a really fast track for growth. But of course, like any business, the more we can rely on earned and owned media versus an over -reliance on paid to help drive both brand awareness, consumer acquisition, and sales, ultimately, better.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:10.496)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (10:24.363)

Last year when we were really diving into who we are, what we stand for and making sure that was crystal clear, there was a really clear objective tied to it from a business standpoint, which is ultimately to grow brand awareness, acquire new users. And one of the primary ways that we identified we would do this is through building community. Community to us has actually always been something very central to piece out.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:53.216)

Yep.

Amanda Knappman (10:54.365)

He's actually a head of community for a number of years. and it's had a very strong community for a number of years. I think for a couple of reasons, one is that acne has always been a pretty emotional journey for anyone who has it. and so there's always been a lot of stories to tell and connect to that emotional connection, which ties back to Enrico's emotional connection with his struggle. We also have, you know, we're an LGBTQIA plus founded brand, and his husband, Jr. Who's also a founder and also CMO and creative director here. very proud and we're very proud and we don't shy away. And so there's always been a strong community of fans, but, we recognize this, but, we realized it's just so untapped. I need to do more. So we set out to really focus on building …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:23.978)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (11:54.393)

… bigger community, but also obviously a quality community using measures like slides of our community, using measures like earned media value, using measures like social metrics to get a sense of how people were engaging with their brand. And we started this over a year ago and it's been a low and steady progression to the point where …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:05.502)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (12:24.569)

You know, we're at over 3x the EMV on average a month than we were a year ago. We've grown the community followers by over 400 % since last year. We have had 39 viral videos this year. These are all how we define viral as getting over 1 million views completely organic. We've done this in a number of ways, but again, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:29.088)

Wow, wow, that's...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:48.)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (12:52.877)

… that's all great, that's exciting, it's resulted in actually also an increase in sales. So we've seen a correlation at least between focusing on community growth and then also seeing our sales, our retail sales continue to …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:10.836)

Yeah, no, that it makes so much sense too, because when you look at data around referrals, right, people choose products that their friends endorse or their friends being their online creator influencer that they've built a relationship with. so I can definitely see that benefit. And you talked a bit about some of your community members are, …

Amanda Knappman (13:25.913)

Yes.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:37.724)

… influencers and creators, but there's a lot of user generated content as well. you know, how are you kind of managing or approaching the different types of creators and influencers?

Amanda Knappman (13:52.025)

Yeah. That's a great question. And we kind of took the old multi-tiered influencer model and then expanded on it and rebranded it in a way, communities. So we were really focused on what our end goal was, which wasn't just kind of lead influencers, but actually cultivating and building a community. So we have our own multi -tiered influencer strategy, like many other brands. So, you know, we work … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:00.148)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (14:20.537)

… micro-influencers, although less and less these days. We work with a lot of micro-influencers, nano -influencers. We also then said another portion of our community really has to be working with germs, the tuitions, skin care experts in the space can really lend that medical credibility. And then we also created our own Peace Out Acting Squad, so dedicated ambassadors who we have a new class every six months.

Who are also nano micro influencers, but we want to give them a platform to share their stories, their content. And then as you mentioned, a huge portion of our focus is actually UGC. So because it's about our own fans and our own followers and our own, you know, consumers who just love us and have been diehard fans since the beginning. So we leverage a few different … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:51.402)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Knappman (15:14.457)

… platforms currently. One of them that we started this year is called Kale. We had seen some other great skincare companies who we admire use Kale as well to help build their communities. And it really allows for almost anyone to participate, engage with the brand, and get rewarded. And so we've used Kale as one where we set challenges and consumers and users can go and complete the challenges and get something in return.

And then of course, he's also dove into things like TikTok shop and affiliate marketing and affiliate creators and things like that. So we're trying to get the whole gamut and figure out how we build the most robust community plan.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:57.303)

Yeah, no, and it's such a smart strategy, right? Because to your point you're bringing in voices from different audiences, whether it's the dermatologists or actual users, but also kind of really expanding that reach to new people. So I think that's so smart. And so how do you approach amplifying some of the organic content with paid media?

Amanda Knappman (16:26.361)

Yeah. So it's been really important to us because we have such a focus on community to make sure that we are not falsely inflating our own metrics. So that's why I say, for example, we've had 39 videos go viral this year. And again, defining viral as at least a million views. This is predominantly on TikTok, but also YouTube, Instagram. We wait for that. Actually, we wait for it to reach a point until we actually amplify it with the media. 

I love getting earned and then amplifying with the media because that's, you know, from a return standpoint, that's the best thing that you can hope for. yeah, we've been a little, a little funny with that and just saying, you know, most of the time I would think, you hit, you know, a few hundred thousand, you want to start pushing the media behind it. But we really, really, really wanted to see that organically, we were able to grow that kind of engagement and following on our own. So that's how we think about it. 

We put paid media, we amplify with paid media behind social and for the most part, and we also have also used it in a way where we'll partner with people who have organically gone viral to say, hey, future partnerships. We have some of our squad who's gone viral end up on the store signage for us. You know, it's another feature that mixes our privacy.

Or we try to kind of give them more of a platform to try.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:02.378)

Yeah, no, that's incredible. And it goes back to kind of letting the creator, your brand advocate use their own voice and kind of what they, showing their own passion. You don't have to write a script when they have so much love for your product.

Amanda Knappman (18:20.973)

Definitely. Yeah. I think that's the biggest key. We're very hands -on. We have a fantastic team here at Peace Down who runs all of our community, community outreach, community management, community relations. And they're really given a lot of autonomy to make sure that they're running it in the way that they think is best. And they in turn give a ton of autonomy and are very hands -off with our creator partners.

because we know that that gives the content. I mean, it's been proven just in the actual metric that we can see what gets better engagement.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:00.244)

No, I love that. yeah, it's such a smart strategic approach. And you talked about some other examples where you work to kind of surprise and delight through sampling. Talk about how you've used product trials as well.

Amanda Knappman (19:17.891)

Yeah, so I mentioned community as being one of the primary focus areas for us in achieving our business objectives this year from a marketing standpoint of building brand awareness, acquiring new users, and ultimately driving those sales. And in addition to community, trial and sampling was a huge, huge, huge one. Historically, we haven't sampled quite as much as I think we would have wished at PISA. So we really had the opportunity for 2024 because of the planning time period, because we thinking about this last year, plan for an extremely robust sampling program. So we increased our sampling with our retailers by some ungodly percentage. I mean, it's night and day. It's really exciting. But then we also …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:47.158)

Mm-mm.

Amanda Knappman (20:15.137)

… to create some additional types of marketing sampling programs with the intent to ultimately increase repeat purchase and lifetime value as measured on our direct-to-consumer website. So we actually partnered with a company called SoPost earlier this year, for which we actually just got results back. It was really cool. Basically running paid media on Meta, advertising a free sample of our Acne Dots, you could sign up, get the free sample, also volunteer to opt into our email list and things like that, also fill out a couple of questions. I just found out that more than half, close to 50 % of those people who actually opted in had never heard of PeaceBot before, which was amazing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:05.206)

Wow, that's huge. Yeah, yeah. That's incredible.

Amanda Knappman (21:11.257)

So we're just going through some of those results now, but this is where we now are paying really close attention to kind of getting into cohort analysis and all those fun things on our DTC, because even if it's this initial test with SOPOS, that obviously can help us understand how beneficial sampling can be in the future. We also, this past June during Pride Month and Acne Awareness Month, which is basically piece outs number one, one like it's owned and this ties back into the community. wanted to reach our community or people who we thought might be interested or encouraging of it. We just decided we were going to send 17 ,000 limited edition Acme Pride Dots, which are …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:41.813)

Yeah.

Amanda Knappman (22:08.569)

… kind of acne people patches, but in our peace out like little emoji, Pride Progress flag. We sent it out to friends, to family. We researched across the United States of groups, organizations to send these to. And then also had an opt -in as well in the spirit of Pride and from Enrico who wanted to share the Pride, especially as this year, there were some retailers who told …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:12.362)

Mmm, yeah.

Amanda Knappman (22:37.561)

So we kind of wanted to lean in as a brand and we were able to actually reach over our limit within two and a half days. We thought this was going to be like a month-long thing of people being interested. No, two and a half days later, over 17 ,000 requests had come in. So we hope that also during the month of June, we really spread our celebration of pride with everyone across the US and Canada.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:07.956)

Right. No, Amanda, this is great. Like your examples of building reach and community and new customers and to drive business growth, think is a really unique strategy, especially when, you know, budgets get tighter and, you know, even consumer spending habits tighten to be able to build that kind of loyalty and love for your brand to kind of overcome.

A lot of those challenges. this is amazing. Thank you so much. Are there any other last recommendations you would have for brands that are, you know, looking for growth and reach like you've achieved?

Amanda Knappman (23:52.761)

Yeah, think when it comes to community building, and it's been this kind of thing that I've repeated for a number of months of, it's kind of like the, we build it, they will come. It's to build the community, grow the community, nurture the community. I promise the sales will follow. It's easier said than done. But I really think it's true because it goes back to some of the core branding principles and the core marketing principles.

The more we can create these emotional connections with our consumers, the more they can really feel seen by a brand and feel connected, especially if you're targeting younger generations of consumers who really look to brand values and to align that. think ultimately, the more consumers you're going to have, the more sales you're ultimately going to see because they're going to be very interested in partnering or aligning themselves.

So the advice is I really think it works. It's great to maybe do small tests here and there, use small case studies so you can show how there is progress, even if it takes

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

So Amanda, talk a bit about how you approach influencers and creators to go beyond just content and really build that community.

Amanda Knappman 

Yeah, I think actually the fact that we've reframed our approach to influencer marketing as an approach to community building is what's key. I think if you approach influencer and creator partnerships purely on that level, it becomes very much a pay for play, what's in this contract? How do we measure the worth or the value of every single individual?

Influencer, with huge sessions, with getting really into performance marketing metrics. If we, when we approach them as a community, we're looking at actually first and foremost, authentically loves Psell and or who authentically would be a consumer, a user of Psell. So instead of going after maybe always the biggest names or the most you know, top of the charts influencers who are also great. But, you know, instead of that, we're, we're first saying, well, who has acne prone skin or who's been really open about their struggle with acne? Who is someone who really would benefit from working with us or who has already very openly expressed that they are someone who uses our products. And ultimately that does and has led us to stronger partnerships with influencers or creators who I think ultimately are more authentic on screen because they actually are. 

They don't just seem that way, but they are. And we all know that that's something that the consumer scrolling through really now can recognize. They can tell when someone's paid, they can tell when someone's not. And for those who are paid, I think, you know, if you're really trying to create that connection and bring people into your brand, those who are more authentic ultimately winning.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

No, it's such a smart approach. Thank you for sharing.