Under Armour

ROB: [00:00:00] Hey, Jesse.

JESSE: Hey, Rob.

ROB: I have a question for you today. Um, do you have a token influencer that you follow? Who's, um, who's on your Instagram at the moment?

JESSE: I have probably too many on my Instagram, but I would say maybe not an individual person, but, um, social media presence from a company called The Everymom gets me every time.

ROB: Okay.

JESSE: They do a lot of content geared towards moms, and so as a mom of a almost three-year-old, it really resonates with me. But my favorite kind of series that they do, is they do these seasonal capsules, and I can't figure out what to buy, what to shop to stay semi-trendy and relevant but also comfortable.

And so those seasonal capsules come out, and I buy so much stuff from it because they've taken all the guesswork out of what's in trend, what's in style.

If it's on The Everymom, I'm probably gonna buy it.

ROB: Okay. Are you wearing any [00:01:00] stuff right now that is-

JESSE: Ooh ...

ROB: One of their recommendations?

JESSE: You caught me on a - oh, yes, actually!

ROB: Oh, there you go.

JESSE: Yeah. They had recommended a striped T-shirt for their fall collection And that made its way into my closet with about three or four other things.

ROB: Okay. Okay.

Hello, and welcome to the podcast, Jesse. Could you do us a favor and go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners?

JESSE: Thanks for having me. I am Jesse Ashkin, VP of Client Services for the US. Um, I've been with Awin for, you'll know this, Rob, and we're probably very close, but I've been at Awin for almost 14 years.

ROB: Oh, my God.

JESSE: Always on the advertiser side of things. I know. Seems like a lifetime ago.

ROB: You don't look old enough.

JESSE: Oh, that's very kind. I would disagree. Um, but I am overseeing our managed services, um, teams across North America. We work with some fantastic brands who are really leveraging affiliate marketing as a key growth channel for their brands and for their strategy. And so we're [00:02:00] just helping them run everything end to end from reporting, strategy, partnership recommendations and management. And really I see the value of our team and our roles in helping clients to really make sense of this dynamic and ever-evolving space, and making sure that they're setting up their programs and their partnerships for long-term sustainable growth.

ROB: Yeah. Yeah. Totally makes sense. And for today's episode, it's a bit of a departure from our usual format, to be honest, because we actually recorded this live at Think Tank Americas in Chicago, which was a great experience. What did you make of it, Jesse? Was this, um, first time doing a live podcast, I presume?

JESSE: It was, and it was a great experience. I mean, you definitely helped me get, uh, comfortable and-

ROB: Get through it?

JESSE: And a fun experience, um, working with a pro like you with your podcast expertise, but what did you think of Chicago?

ROB: No, I loved it. I've been to Chicago a couple of times now, but, um, it's always...

I've not been to much of the US, but I've been to Vegas, I've been to New York, I've been to Chicago. Out of those big three, I'd say Chicago is [00:03:00] my, my number one, uh, destination.

JESSE: Yeah.

ROB: Really cool city.

JESSE: It is a cool place.

ROB: I haven't been to Baltimore yet though, so.

JESSE: Come on down and visit us.

ROB: Now, if you wanna get a small flavor of what Think Tank was really like out in Chicago, then do check out our highlights episodes from the event.

We covered both days, and you can find them right in our feed.

JESSE: Actually listened to the highlights on the flight home-

ROB: Oh, there you go!

JESSE: ... And can vouch that they were really interesting and a really great way to kind of relive the event.

ROB: Not to fall asleep to and kind of, uh, get through your flight?

JESSE: No, they, they were really short, so the nap came afterwards.

But for today's episode, Rob and I spoke to Under Armour about how influencer and creator partnerships are becoming one of their most powerful growth levers.

DIMITRI: We've had quite the journey, obviously, a, a heritage brand in sports, we've kinda gone wide. And then over the last few years we've really focused in on being for athletes, being for performance, really being, um, authentic to, you know, [00:04:00] very key sports for us. Um, so we've, we've gone in heavy on American football in the US - globally, um, global football. But really it's all about performance and athletes, and being at the center of their lives, and trying to not only inspire them to, to be their best athlete and best self, but also give them an edge through our technology and performance products. So we're excited that we're very focused on that versus just kinda chasing sports style or trying to be a copycat brand, like, really being the thing that's we're very authentic and feel very rooted in.

JESSE: That's Dimitri Georgiev, head of media and digital marketing at Under Armour.

DIMITRI: My role luckily is, uh, not just in affiliate, it's really full funnel marketing. Um, and so I can kinda see the forest through the trees. I can sort of elevate the story of what affiliate is and should be, and how it fits across the funnel.

I have the privilege of being able to kind of help the company prioritize our investments and do more with less stories and less products so that we can actually make traction in the marketplace. So we've been very focused on brand first, and then key [00:05:00] franchises that are gonna really bring us forward.

Um, I'm excited to kinda bring that data and science to the table-

ROB: Yeah

DIMITRI: ... as well with my team.

JESSE: So maybe diving a little bit more into where partnerships sit overall, and how do you see, um, affiliates and creators kind of converging to support your strategy?

DIMITRI: You know, even five years ago we were athlete, athlete, athlete, and as you imagine, a brand like Under Armour is just: what are the athletes you're gonna sign? What's the partnerships over time?

You know, we obviously have amazing schools like Notre Dame and Wisconsin and Maryland, and other, uh, leagues that we're a part of. But creator and influencer has become one of the most important levers for us, and so we're actually treating influencers and creators as authenticators, um, whether that be specialty i- in the sport that they have, you know, expertise in, or they're just great at driving product relevance in the marketplace.

And so we've scaled significantly in the creator and partnership space. Um, we're also using co- content partners at scale as well to be able to authenticate in either areas around things like, you know, [00:06:00] Football, Run, Golf. We're kind of looking at it as a multi-prong approach. It's not just lower funnel, it's, uh, really a full funnel approach.

But yeah, creators, influencers have become, and will continue to be, a very big part of our strategy.

ROB: Mm-hmm. And so then you obviously oversee those different functions within the team. Um, you've got creator, you've got, uh, affiliate obviously itself, and other kind of paid media in there. Could you give us, like, a bit of an oversight as to, to how you get those teams to collaborate when you've got a campaign to run across the different channels?

DIMITRI: Honestly, we, we've been using a media mix model. Um, there's a lot of blind spots in marketing-

ROB: Mm-hmm.

DIMITRI: ... But affiliate's one of the areas that doesn't typically have blind spots. But what's great about it is through the MMM, we're able to understand things that certain channels wouldn't typically be what you expect them to do.

So in- in influencer, for example, we're able to see that, you know, not only do we know through affiliate links what they're doing, but we know that they have a big role in driving consideration, or they have a, they have kind of a hidden ROAS that's really, really strong.

ROB: Mm-hmm.

DIMITRI: We've brought a lot of that... like, when I talked [00:07:00] about science and bringing measurement to the table, a lot of it's about really helping the company understand the strategy and why these things matter, and not just going off of art and storytelling and gut. It's a little bit of balancing both.

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: We're to the point now, though, with creators and partnerships where it's just a given it's gonna be part of the plan. It's not just episodic or one time for, for a particular campaign. So we're really thinking, "Hey, we're gonna launch this new sneaker. What are the creators we're gonna use? What are the athletes we're gonna use on our roster? How are we gonna use partners, and then what is the full funnel, like, large scale approach look like?"

ROB: And how does affiliate kind of stack up in terms of what the, the mixed media modeling is telling you, um, where the value lies?

DIMITRI: The, the highest ROI, obviously, from a sales perspective, um... But when you kinda measure last click versus, you know, MMM, it does lose a little bit of credit.

ROB: Mm-hmm.

DIMITRI: But still the best ROI overall.

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: Um, so it's a little bit of, like, level setting, uh, but I, I, I think part of it is also how we've decided to use affiliate versus where I think we will start to [00:08:00] use more of it. And I think a lot of brands do this, where there's your brand budget, there's your product media, kinda mid-funnel budget, there's your performance marketing budget and your affiliate budget, and where we, we tend to force a ROAS on the affiliate budget versus realizing affiliate's really so many things.

And I think that's something this group really understands, that we almost have to retell the story of affiliate internally.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: But I actually think the industry has a really big opportunity to, to fix this-

ROB: Mm-hmm.

DIMITRI: ... Because, you know, uh, CEOs and C-suite members, they're not really interested in, like, many details beyond 30 seconds.

So it sometimes get deduced to: "Affiliates over here. Can I get the five to 10 ROAS over here?"

ROB: Mm-hmm.

DIMITRI: And I'm like, "Well, yes, you can, but if we wait to do only that or if we put the pressure on affiliate to do only that, you're missing out on a lot of opportunities to build the brand, to build demand, to actually use some of the more premium aspects of affiliate."

And now that our, our, our journey has evolved a bit, we're looking to [00:09:00] become more premium. We've- we are not just running to the discount bucket, uh, or to the deep discount bucket. Uh, we're using it more strategically. I think there's a lot of opportunity within affiliate, within creator, within the world, um, that w- we're all talking about to really drive the brand forward while still getting a really strong return.

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: So that is a little bit of the reshaping of what affiliate means to the minds of leaders too, because we all understand it - or starting to understand it - but not everybody understands it. And so it's easy to get budgets compartmentalized and expectations and KPIs set that will kinda force you to make decisions versus saying, "Hey, there's a better way to do this."

And so we're, we're really trying to, we're trying to evolve that, um, and become more premium. We really actually think affiliate could play a big role in our premiumization.

ROB: I really wanna ask you, 'cause this comes up in a lot of interviews that I speak to, particularly on the brand side, where you are looking to try to educate internally, particularly with senior stakeholders.

What's that been like? How have you gone about that with other stakeholders within the business and other [00:10:00] teams, functions, departments, merchandising teams, e-commerce teams, about what affiliate is, and has that perception changed over the duration of your kinda years at Under Armour?

DIMITRI: Yes. Uh, it's changed a lot and- but what's really interesting about storytelling and, is that when you're an expert, or you, like people on my team who are, like, deep experts in these areas. You go to the depths of the detail before you rise up and actually tell the story in a very simple way.

You have to almost, like, reframe it. Like, what's the simplest version of the story? And actually say things that seem super obvious-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: ... Because their perception is different than what it is. And so there'll be examples where we're sure, like, this is a content partner.

ROB: Mm-hmm.

DIMITRI: And I go... And then they're like, "Oh, yeah, we know content partnerships."

I'm like, "Well, that's affiliate."

ROB: Mm-hmm.

DIMITRI: And then it kinda goes, "Oh, that's affiliate?" And then I, I could give five examples where the really simple explanation goes a really long way, and then you start to reframe the conversation. So it's a, it's actually a powerful, um, lesson in the power of storytelling and not trying to outsmart everyone [00:11:00] with the detail-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: And starting with a little bit of the, "Here's the simple stuff you should know first. And by the way, do, do you have energy now and wanna go a little deeper? Okay, let's do that in the next 26 slides."

ROB: I feel like the approach we need to take is the approach that I take to explaining my job to my parents.

DIMITRI: Yes.

ROB: And that's basically the same.

DIMITRI: Yes, yes, yes.

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JESSE: One area I wanted to dive into your strategy, which has been really exciting as a Terp alumni, is your partnerships with the students, um, athletes, but specifically with University of Maryland. So I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how that came to be, and how that, um, partnership has kind of fit into the performance world and into your creator strategy.

DIMITRI: Yeah. So one of our pushes internally was we have to activate and utilize the athletes, and the schools, and the properties, and the relationships that we have even more. And so when we were getting very, very bullish on creator and influencer, we started really thinking about the pinnacle expression of the core consumer we wanna go reach is a team sport athlete.

And so we actually kicked off with Notre Dame, and we created a student athlete program where basically all student athletes could join this affiliate creator program. We were really excited to get this off the ground, but we needed the pipes to do it, we need the ability to, to pay the commissions.

It's [00:13:00] actually not great for, like, the star quarterback. It's fantastic for the track athlete-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ...the soccer team, player number six that, like, doesn't get all the NIL money. And so actually when N- NIL opened, it actually made this an area we can play in because before we were kinda stuck with utilizing the property as a whole, but we couldn't use individual athletes.

You'd have to kinda use a group of them. It'd have to be all these rules around NIL. NIL opened up a lot of that, but we also said, "Hey, instead of just waiting to sign the hotshot quarterback, what about giving all student athletes the opportunity to actually join this program?"

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: And they then can start to actually build their ability to story tell, and become an influencer and creator. So we, we train them in some ways. Some of them are fantastic, and happens to be that, you know, the fourth-best women's volleyball player has actually got a bigger following and is way better at storytelling. So we've learned a lot about what you think it is versus what it can be.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: Um, the other thing is it's become a, um, an insights machine.

ROB: [00:14:00] Mm.

DIMITRI: When you put the products in front of the top athletes or all the athletes at a Division 1 school like Notre Dame or Maryland, you get a lot of truth on what they love, they dislike. They even have helped us name products.

ROB: Oh, really?

DIMITRI: Our backpack, uh, the No Way backpack, which feels like nothing when you put it on, "No Way." We've had an athlete go, "No way!" And it was like this, like, experience, and then it felt so simple we're like, "We should just call it No Way." And it ended up getting traction internally, and then became the name of the backpack. It... That, I think is a good example of ways that we've leveraged the athletes to not just be marketing machines for us, but also to give us true insights-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ... And have them teach us things we don't know.

I mean, when you're, when you're trying to win over the 18 to 24, 16 to 24-year-old team athlete, and you have a bunch of 40-plus people trying to figure it out-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: ... you, you actually have some blind spots.

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: You might wanna listen to the consumer you're going after, and, um, these, these programs have been a big, a big part of it.

And we've seen really strong engagement. We've seen passion for [00:15:00] the brand. It feels authentic-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ... Uh, which I think is a really big part I haven't said enough about in this conversation yet, which is we don't wanna just work with people that are churning out product.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: We want every consumer who sees this content to believe and feel the energy they have for the brand and the product that they are, they're showing-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: ... Uh, for UA, and that, that's really critical for us, too. So that's why sometimes relationships work out, sometimes they don't, but we're not just looking to hawk product. We're looking to drive brand fans.

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: And, um, we kind of feel like the people that are, that are raving about our product need to be doing it in an authentic way.

ROB: Yeah. Yeah.

How do you... How prescriptive are you when you're working with those young athletes in terms of that, that brand story, uh, and how does it practically work in terms of bringing them aboard and giving them product, and then - do you just let them have at it?

DIMITRI: This is a great topic because we've gone down the route of literally writing scripts. We've gone down the route of sharing, like, a one-page brief. Uh, we've tried to give them the exact, like, product features that they should talk to, and the more prescribed you are... We've, we've found the more [00:16:00] prescribed you are, the worse it is-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ... Because they're not talking about the things they wanna talk... like, the, in the way that they wanna talk about it. But at the same time, you can't just say, "Hey, take this product, and-

ROB: Mm

DIMITRI: ... just talk about it the way you want." So there's a balance. The balance was somewhere right in the middle, and that was giving them information, but letting them go in the direction they want with the product.

And then if there's something you really don't want them to say, just kinda saying, "Here's, here are your don'ts list."

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: "But otherwise, talk about it in a way that you really feel, like, resonates with you."

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: And so we've had some of the best lines come from true, authentic, non-scripted things.

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: It's like, "Oh, I didn't know you had these." I'm like... Like, they try them on, they're doing a unboxing or something. They're trying on product, and they were genuinely blown away. It's like they were actually trying them on for the first time and talking about it. And, "I didn't realize you- Under Armour made this," or, "Oh, wow, this, this, the, the stretch of the yoga pants is a lot different than I thought. Oh, it doesn't have seams. Oh, this feels like butter." Like, all, all these things that maybe we would not have said in a scripted brief.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: Um, and [00:17:00] you, y- and I think everyone can understand how brands will prescribe the hell out of exactly what we want. But the reality is the difference between creative developed by a brand and influencer creative, more and more we see the influencer creative is performing the best.

ROB: Yeah.

JESSE: It's back to your power of demonstration. You could have given them those talking points, it could be on your website. But hearing them feel it, see it, demonstrate it -

DIMITRI: That's right. That's right.

JESSE: ... Is key. Um, down to the creative, do you notice any difference in terms of the types of creative that creators are creating? Like, in terms of quality, styles, and is there a, an avenue that you guys have found works best for certain, certain products or certain goals?

DIMITRI: The easier the product is to demonstrate something unique about it, the most success we've seen.

You might have a very good-looking T-shirt, but if there's nothing about it that's interesting to storytell around, then it just becomes a, "I love this, the way it looks," and that becomes very generic.

But I'll give you, I'll give you an example. So we have a Stealth Form hat, and this hat is something you can, like, crumble up in a ball and put in your back pocket, [00:18:00] take it out, and it just pops right back into form. Well, you can imagine the creators had a field day with this. Everybody had their own way of telling the story. One guy was, rolled his truck over the hat, and it actually popped right back into form, which I wasn't even sure it would do.

ROB: It's not a Tesla demo, is it?

DIMITRI: It was, it was, it was unbelievable. Uh, he, he started off by dropping 100 pound weight on it, and then he's like, "Oh, let me just roll my car over it," and he rolls his car over it, and it popped right back into form.

And back to, you know, how you can demonstrate these products through these mediums-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ... When we do that - we have a water jug that's, uh, been taking off, and it's so funny to hear creators talk about how easy it is to drink water. The amount of things they're able to authentically say about this product, the way you hold it, the way the water pours out, the way it keeps it...

All these things about the product that, uh, we're, like, kind of giggling about, but we realize, oh, wow, the power of demonstration's coming through-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: ... In a very significant way.

ROB: Yeah. Yeah.

DIMITRI: Um, so we're leaning into it.

ROB: I wanted to just go back to, um, [00:19:00] this notion of balancing performance, which, you know, is obviously the, the real infrastructure or the legacy of affiliate that's really well-established, but that, that brand side of it as well. So we know that affiliates often adept at, uh, driving efficient performance. How do you balance that with those broader brand and, and maybe margin goals as well, that you're trying to strike a s- a balance between?

DIMITRI: What we're trying to do is reframe the channel and what it means, but I, I think about performance marketing, and anyone who runs performance marketing in a very, like, brand-first organization, knows that performance marketing is like a bad word. And I'm on a mission to change that, where it's not a bad word.

Performance marketing, affiliate marketing is not bad for your brand. The decisions you make are bad for your brand.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: So if you're constantly chasing revenue and going to 50, 60% off, and that's the way you leverage performance marketing and affiliate, sure, it's not gonna be great long-term for your brand because you're training a consumer to be very promo first.

However, if you're [00:20:00] using affiliate to drive commissions through partnerships, through all the different ways that are more premium-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ... Then actually it benefits the brand.

ROB: Yep.

DIMITRI: So that is a lot of what we're trying to balance now and, but we also don't wanna just chase creators and partners that are only gonna get a strong return for us because it ends up being a zero-sum game.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: Um, we end up relying too much on just that as the last-click metric, and I think we're reframing the performance marketing and affiliate mix-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ... To have different roles at each part of it.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: So you may, you may require a three ROAS for certain tactics. You may require a two ROAS. You may require a five for the other deeper ones-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ... And plus. And I think it's different for every brand, but a lot of this is a little bit of where your brand's journey is.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: You know, some brands thrive and are almost always on discount. Some are a little bit more premium, so, like, playing a little bit in the space makes, makes sense. But we really are trying to reshape the KPIs around different parts of performance marketing and affiliate-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: [00:21:00] So that we don't get stuck in a situation where we're only requiring the maximized ROAS on an entire, um, n- it's not a channel, it's an entire ecosystem of things that you could be doing for the brand. So that's a big part of how we're reframing it, but I also think back to the MMM. It's a great unifier because we actually created a scorecard that every upper funnel, lower funnel, mid funnel channel has a score, and the score is for, for awareness: what does it drive? For consideration: what does it drive? For ROAS and sales: what does it drive?

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: And we're even grading TV on metrics you wouldn't typically grade TV on.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: And we're grading affiliate channels and lower funnel social media on, uh, KPIs you wouldn't always grade them on, like awareness.

ROB: Yep.

DIMITRI: Um, we're really trying to rewrite this because I think the, the notion of the funnel is collapsing- Is absolutely more true now than ever.

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: And you see that through, you know, TV scientific and their ability to help bring more shoppability and more connectivity at the TV level. You see the fact that the number one thing you [00:22:00] watch on TVs is YouTube. Like, everything's becoming-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: ... More usable and more connected-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: ... And, and easier for consumers, you- where it's not like the old days where you just watch a TV ad, and then you get a direct mail.

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: Then you-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: ... You move people down the funnel literally. That doesn't exist anymore, really.

ROB: Yeah. It's interesting, and I think actually we're seeing, obviously creators are the, probably the biggest example of this, um, where you're seeing this blended approach and kind of more merging of channels within affiliate itself, and they're kind of turning to it for that performance anchor.

We just- I was just having a conversation with, um, AudioHooked, who are doing, like, programmatic, uh, podcast ad insertions, but doing it on a CPA level, coming to- into the affiliate industry to suddenly make that kind of media accessible to the industry for the first time, which is really fascinating.

DIMITRI: It is.

ROB: You know, podcasting is, is, is blowing up. It's massive, so, um, and we're obviously a big part of that.

JESSE: Awin-Win is at the forefront.

ROB: Yeah.

Just to go back to maybe more of those, um, I don't know if traditional is the right word, but conventional, like what kind of value are you seeing from maybe more incentive-based partners - 'cause you're still working with a lot of [00:23:00] those guys as well, alongside the creator aspect of it - um, beyond just sales volume? And are they helping you to acquire certain types of customers, or are you kind of able to use them in a, in a more strategic way maybe?

DIMITRI: Yeah, and, and I think the conversation this morning was great reminder and very eye-opening around LLMs and what indexes and how we actually win that game.

And I was just talking to the team about this, that I don't wanna do something just to index well on LLMs. But there's a double-edged sword with a lot of these partners, where it might be the right partner to help you authenticate a product-

ROB: Mm.

DIMITRI: ...or a category, but they also are an authority that then gets referenced in LLMs, and so they serve a dual purpose.

And, like, YouTube's another great example of, we do a ton of video storytelling. We use creators at scale. Like, we need to get that right, and we need to get the Reddits of the world right because our product's all about innovation and technology and all those things. And no better place to, you know, get that right than a place like Reddit.

[00:24:00] So yeah, it, it, it comes back to trying to make the right authentic decisions that will help elevate the brand and the products, uh, that you wanna push forward, that you wanna be- you create household names around. But also, if they serve a dual purpose and can help accelerate us in the AI game, then don't sleep on that as another reason to be leveraging these partners and not necessarily just chasing a 10 ROAS-

ROB: Yeah.

DIMITRI: ...or whatever the number might be.

JESSE: It sounds like it's more about evolving the strategy and diversifying how you approach the channel rather than just like replacing something, which can often be how the conversation goes. Is that how you're viewing the like next stage of the affiliate strategy and creator strategy at Under Armour?

DIMITRI: Absolutely. Uh, we do a ton of testing. I think we need to do even more testing. And quite frankly, what works gets more. What doesn't work starts to get less. So it's really, it really has to be dynamic. But again, it's also ... It's tough sometimes on a Monday to look at results and go, "What were the, what was the ROAS? What are we doing?" And then we have to kinda step back and say, "Wait a second. We know strategically [00:25:00] this is a better decision long-term to make these decisions. This may not get you the five ROAS, but let's keep on it. Let's continue to iterate. Let's continue to test in the space." So we're doing a lot of testing.

It's definitely an evolution. Where we were with creator two years ago is, it's like night and day where we are today. I imagine it'll get even more, you know, intense and e- even more scale, and we have very ambitious plans about it even, even in this fiscal year. So yeah, it's an evolution.

JESSE: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.

ROB: That's right. Um, how did you find that conversation, Jesse?

JESSE: It was really interesting. Having some familiarity with what they are building with their affiliate program and creator program at Under Armour, has been really exciting to see it come from an idea to fruition.

Um, but to me, Dimitri's takes and perspective, just really refreshing and interesting to consider how partnerships are evolving and also how [00:26:00] leadership interpret and what they need, um, to hear and to see to feel really confident in this new direction, um, for affiliate programs and partnerships.

ROB: Yeah, I think it's, um, a really interesting perspective to get on the podcast, and it's kind of what I'd love to get more of is big brands, kind of senior stakeholders who are maybe a bit more elevated away from the channel on the day-to-day, but who clearly are engaged by it, excited by it, and see real value from a strategic perspective on it.

Um, and Dimitri's take on the fact of like educating his peers in the business-

JESSE: Mm-hmm.

ROB: ... and like saying, you know, we need to start off with simple explanations, compelling stories that really get their attraction first, and then you can dive into the detail. You don't get kind of all hung up at first maybe on trying to justify things by getting really nitty-gritty into the ROI or tracking technicalities, et cetera, because that's not how you're going to, to, to get that kind of senior stakeholder attention.

JESSE: Yeah, I loved that take, and I- it's something I've carried forward even in the recent days and [00:27:00] weeks since of just really trying to keep that top of mind, is start simple-

ROB: Yeah.

JESSE: ...and then build into the complexities.

ROB: Exactly.

JESSE: So yeah, really valuable insights.

ROB: Yeah. Well, great job co-hosting with me, and I look forward to doing it again.

JESSE: Thanks for having me.

ROB: But until next time, thank you so much for listening to Awin-Win Marketing Podcast where we show you how affiliate marketing always offers a win-win.

JESSE: Bye.