TikTok Shop is Wearing a Halo, with Malvika Jaggi, VP of Partnership & Platforms at One Tree Brands

Transcript

Our transcripts are generated by AI. Please excuse any typos and if you have any specific questions please email info@digitalshelfinstitute.org.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where industry leaders share insights, strategies, and stories to help brands win in the ever-changing world of commerce.

 

Peter Crosby (00:22):

Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. Some TikTok shop stats. In H1 2026, global shoppers spend $50.3 billion on the platform, up 92% year over year. Analysts estimate global GMV will reach 123.5 billion by the end of the year. And in the US, TikTok Shop reached eBay scale in two years, a feat that took eBay 30. And on top of all this, our guest Malvika Jaggi, VP of Partnerships and Platforms at eCommerce Aggregator and Growth Partner One Tree Brands sees a clear TikTok shop halo effect across marketplaces. Drawing on a decade leading e-commerce at Reckitt and Red Bull where she managed a $400 million omnichannel P&L across retailer.com, quick commerce and last mile platforms. She shares best practices for TikTok shop and broader e-commerce growth. Welcome to the podcast, Malvika. We are so happy to have you here. Thank you.

 

Malvika Jaggi (01:31):

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be talking to two of my favorite people, also about a topic that I'm very passionate about.

 

Peter Crosby (01:37):

Wow. So thank you. I wanted to highlight that your sort of journey through the levels of the DSI. You got connected from another member, which is always awesome. A referral is so appreciated. And then you've connected us to other amazing members that have even been on the podcast. And so I have to tell you, that's the lifeblood of the DSI and you are living it and just embodying what we were hoping and continue to hope that this will be. So thank you.

 

Malvika Jaggi (02:16):

Yeah, no, of course. I think it's two ways, right? There's equally amazing people that I've met, equally amazing people I've learned from. So it's really a two-way street and we'll only all get smarter if we all do it together.

 

Peter Crosby (02:26):

Totally.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (02:27):

Yes, what you said.

 

Peter Crosby (02:30):

So enough of the gratitude, give more. So you have so much brand and e-commerce experience and you've been at companies like Reckitt, just one of the amazing people that have emerged from that company and gone into the industry and brought their smarts and expertise with them. Red Bull, which is a huge omnichannel portfolio and now OneTree Brands. And rather than be general today, we really wanted to hone in on something that you've been working a lot on, which is your TikTok shop. And we haven't talked about that recently on the podcast, so we're really excited to dig in. And so I guess maybe just might be some people listening who don't know, it's probably worth starting with the difference between TikTok and then TikTok shop and then how you think about it in your mix.

 

Malvika Jaggi (03:27):

Yeah. And I think that's a very important difference because it's ultimately one harmonious experience that lives in a single app. So TikTok started as a discovery platform. It was always meant for discovery content. You kind of did it like watching TV. You just turned it on, you're like, "Let's see what's going to come next." And they basically took it a step further where they made a checkout experience within it. So now when you're watching this video, you see somebody talk about a product, they're like, "Oh, I felt great. I looked great. This made me this." You now have a checkout button at the bottom, and once you click on that checkout button, you get into the TikTok shop experience. So it's no different than an Amazon storefront, except now you're going through a video rather than searching for an item like what are the best sneakers to wear tomorrow?

 

(04:09):

What are the best type of sneakers for me to walk in or run in?

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:12):

And I feel like a lot of brands are talking about TikTok shop and there's been some, "Hey, should we be doing it? Is it important?" And we've seen a big boom in the beauty space. Would you say that's the biggest category that you've seen go live on TikTok Shop recently?

 

Malvika Jaggi (04:30):

That is the biggest category, but there are a lot of other categories that are also very sizable now. I think TikTok, it's funny, has gotten to the point where brands have to figure out whether they want to be there or not, and it's an operational thing. Amazon was not Amazon till it is today, so they have to think about how do they want to start? What does that look like? Internally, how are they set up for it? And comes the all important question of who owns this? Whose responsibility is it?

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:57):

Yes, and we will get to that. But to your point around brands that are seeing success, let's talk about some of those examples. So big brand, small brand, I know you work with the full gamut. Who's having success on TikTok shop and seeing that growth?

 

Malvika Jaggi (05:14):

Yeah. And I think to your point, I'm going to talk about brands that are outside of beauty to give that space that there are others too that can succeed. But I think before I do that, I want to define that the definition of a big and a small brand on TikTok is completely flip-flopped than what we would think because the bigger brands on the platform are actually what you would consider traditionally a small brand because they're very flexible, they're very nimble, they don't have as many layers to go through, and so they've been able to activate on the platform and they're thinking of it as a larger ecosystem than a puzzle to add to their pie, if you will. And so if you take an example of a brand like Bloom, you can call them now a big brand on TikTok and a big brand outside, but when they started out, they started as a supplement brand built for women and they leveraged TikTok to essentially build an army of affiliates that were creating UGC content.

 

(06:05):

So instead of going out and purchasing ads and showcasing that, "Hey, this is what our product is," they were like, "Let's have the consumer speak for us." And if you take a look at that example, they've been able to take that wave, now have expanded assortment, they have energy drinks, they have protein, they have even better for you soda. They translated how many people are talking about their product into trial, into brand awareness, and then of course sales. And they can even say now they have added distribution across your traditional retail channels. So if you take a look at them as an example, they're now top five energy brand across Amazon, Walmart and Target as of earlier.

 

Peter Crosby (06:39):

Wow. And do you feel like TikTok Shop was the first fuel of that? Would they say that or has it just been one of the... I'm just trying to figure out the path to get to the Amazons, Walmarts and Targets of the world. Was that a follower of their TikTok success?

 

Malvika Jaggi (06:59):

Yeah, so they looked at TikTok as an ecosystem, so they didn't look at it as just a shop channel. Traditionally, when you think about a brand who's like, okay, I'm going to go on Amazon, I want to drive sales, and that's the only metric, they looked at it as an entire ecosystem. So if you take another brand in the beauty space, for example, MediCube, Korean Skincare, started off on TikTok, broke into a category that's virtually very difficult to break into if you think about it, not only have they driven significant amount of trial, I'll not tell you how many crazy number of millions of people are purchasing this product, but they're now in Walmart and it was Walmart's pride and joy to put out to say MediCube is now at Walmart. And so I think that tells you just the power of they used it as an entire ecosystem to be like, more people talk about my product.

 

(07:44):

Yes, people can purchase it here because they can't buy it anywhere else. And now you have flags in retail stores that say, as seen on TikTok.

 

Peter Crosby (07:52):

You've talked a lot about trial, and I'm wondering, is that the most frequent kind of result sort of CTA in some way that they're driving true? Or is it a mix? Because what offer are they making? Are they often making a trial offer or is it something different?

 

Malvika Jaggi (08:12):

So TikTok, obviously also the shop side wants to now compete in the e-commerce space. So I think what started out as a trial is now truly a commerce channel. So I'll give you an example of another company like PetIQ, which has brands like Minty's, Rocco, PetArmor. They're using it as a commerce channel, but also a marketing engine. So they're using TikTok and TikTok Shop to build awareness, drive discovery, and then that creates the demand that then has a halo impact on TikTok, but then also off TikTok. So then it's creating also the repeat purchases. You now can subscribe on TikTok. You can now have first time subscriber coupons. You can also incentivize people to follow you as a brand. So if you think about social media when it first came out, when brands were launching their Instagram handles, it was a dog fight to be like, "Please follow me.

 

(09:02):

Please, I need my followers to go from 1,000 to 5,000." Now, if you can incentivize somebody to say, "Hey, look, you can follow me and I'm going to give you access to my new products and here's a coupon," nobody's going to say no.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:15):

And with these examples, was it easy to get everybody on board to do TikTok shop? Because I feel like sometimes it's very much like, oh, I don't know. We have to get everybody on board. To your point, who's going to own this? How are we going to support this? As you've gone through this process with them, has it been a, oh yes, obviously we need to do it, or has it been a very push and pull, we need to convince people that it's important kind of situation or both?

 

Malvika Jaggi (09:41):

I think every brand has that war of we want to do it, but we don't know how. What I will say is the brands that have been successful have two things in common. One, they've been able to identify somebody internally who's the brand champion for this. They're going beyond the traditional walls of, oh, this is a marketing responsibility, this is an e-commerce responsibility. It's more of a, we need to do this as a brand and now we have a champion. And then they have almost a flexible model in the background that's able to then adapt them in that direction. So that means building out the muscle. So not starting with, oh, this is the team structure I need to be able to do this. Rather, here's my brand champion and here's one person from the right department, and now they're going to figure out what that model looks like.

 

Peter Crosby (10:24):

And those brand champions, do you find that they naturally rise to there's somebody that's interested and wants to make this happen, thinks it's great for their career? Is there a lot of hunger out there that it's an opportunity? I don't mean to be ageist or anything, but maybe for a younger employee that loves TikTok and wants to make it a thing?

 

Malvika Jaggi (10:48):

Honestly, we've seen both ends of the spectrum. So you have the younger employee who's, to your point, very hungry. Those are very much for brands that are like, "Hey, here's a small budget, figure it out." But then you also have brands that are like, no, you have senior people in the company that are like, "We need to make this work. And so for that, we need these operational pieces in order." And so they've brought in some of the necessary higher up folks that can help shift those processes in real time to support what TikTok shop needs.

 

Peter Crosby (11:16):

So you talked earlier about the brand opportunity in doing this, and brands are super focused, particularly the ones that you're talking about. The brand is so important because that's what hooks them first in a way, and then you can grow the right to offer more. So how does that work? How does brand come through on TikTok shop, particularly with so many different affiliates involved in advancing this?

 

Malvika Jaggi (11:44):

Yeah, you can think of them almost as like you are building your mini brand ambassadors. So first and foremost, every brand gets to brief the affiliate when they get the sample for TikTok Shop. So every time you get a sample, you get a little leaflet that says, "Hey, these are the things I would like you to highlight. I would prefer that you stay away from these things. I would love it if you took out the product from the packaging, showed it in its actual use." So if I go back to this Mindy's example, take out the treat, give the treat to your dog so you can at least showcase the real life use. So that's the first sort of basic check the box that a brand can do. I think brands can then take it a step further, and these are the ones that are truly succeeding on the platform, by building a community.

 

(12:23):

So you build a community where you're providing insights into, Hey, this works, this doesn't work. I would've preferred it if you showed this in the video or actually, hey, call this out. This has been working very well. Based on our ratings and reviews, we're seeing that more people like feature A versus feature B, and then also start to do a playbook for the creator. And you can even go even further and start doing office hours. So you offer the creators an opportunity to talk to the brand because creators also want to be unique. They also don't want to be cookie cutter and be like, I'm going to do the next thing as four others because they want to feed the quality on the platform. So I'll sidebar a little where the platform ultimately needs quantity and quality. So you'll get a lot of noise creators that could be cookie cutter in the same type of video, but you'll also have the quality creators, which are truly the ones that are driving volume for the brands, and those are the ones that also want to build a relationship with the brand.

 

(13:15):

It's in their best interest that they do what the brand does well, brand sells more, they make more, everybody's happy.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (13:22):

But would you agree that it's a thin line between too much control from the brand and giving creative agency to the influencer? I've heard some influencers say, "Hey, we don't like briefs or we don't want direction." So I think it can go either way, but I know the concern for many brands is like, "Hey, we don't have control over this," and there's been horror stories, obviously we've all seen them, of things going wrong. So what's that, I guess, happy medium or how do you convince brands that it's okay if something gets out that maybe they didn't necessarily want?

 

Malvika Jaggi (13:57):

Yeah, I think the biggest piece is they can give direction in terms of things to call out, features to really hone in on. But yeah, to your point, it has to be on the creative freedom of the person to showcase how it is. You can't say it has to be in this background, in this lighting, you can only use these six words because then it becomes very scripted. And I think that's where a lot of brands struggle. And it's funny, I've always said this where the reason I think TikTok puts so many brands in an uncomfortable position is because it's taking word of mouth and recording it. People have always been talking about a product. Every one of us can remember some friend told them some hack about some product, but that was never anywhere advertised. And by no means is something the brand would say, "Yes, this is exactly how I would say it." The only difference now is it's recorded for multiple people to see that you may not know.

 

Peter Crosby (14:48):

Well, it's that reach really that's kind of the thing.

 

Malvika Jaggi (14:51):

I think it's a recorded reach. It's not even the actual reach, it's just the recording. Somebody now has a recording of it.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (14:58):

There's proof.

 

Malvika Jaggi (14:59):

Exactly.

 

Peter Crosby (15:00):

Yeah. I mean, I love the idea of, because I would imagine... Actually, let me ask you, is there sort of an Uber driver rating kind of system for affiliates? Because I was thinking of if there's an affiliate that's really violating it, is there a way to let other people know this might be an affiliate that you'd want to stay away from or anything like that?

 

Malvika Jaggi (15:26):

Actually, 100%. There is absolutely an Uber rating system. There's also a system where on both ends, an affiliate can see how much a shop has sold and a shop owner can always see how much an affiliate has sold, but also how frequently the affiliate posts. So if an affiliate has a post rate of 50%, that means they post one of every two samples they get. It's also not in their best interest to have a low post rating. Plus on top of that, there's also, to your point, the five stars of this is a great creator to work with. This is not so great creator to work with.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (15:59):

Oh, I like it. Uber rating for influencers. I mean, it makes sense. It's like a rating and review for them. Yeah. So Malvika, one thing that we've talked a lot about, and I think it's super important for brands, is the finance perspective. So it takes investment to get started, to maintain a TikTok shop, that money has to come from somewhere. How are you seeing brands have the conversation around what the investment is, if there is necessarily a return on that channel or a halo effect? How is that happening with finance, with leadership? Because I feel like it can be a little tricky.

 

Malvika Jaggi (16:36):

100%. I think it's no different than who's the owner. The brands that are able to do it well, they start one of two ways. One, they start with a test and learn budget. So rather than put an ROI to it or have some expectations, they carve out a good amount of money, have this brand champion, and then they work to figure it out, to understand what is the potential. To your point, is it sales? Is it reach? Is it how many videos I'm getting? But the brands that have even grown over time, they're able to think about it more holistically than just a TikTok shop P&L because in no scenario right out of the gate is the TikTok shop P&L going to be worth it. You think about it, you have to give a sample out to an affiliate. The affiliate has time to create the content, which means there's a natural lag into when these sales will come.

 

(17:22):

So the window of when you're going to see your return is much longer than a traditional Amazon where somebody searches a keyword, clicks, 14-day attribution, same month you know whether your dollar in was your dollar out. So it's about that, I think, flexibility to be able to look at the halo impact, but also look at it across the e-commerce channel and beyond. Some brands are also thinking it's too early, and so they're waiting for the marketplace as they think about it to be like, "I'm going to hop on once this social discovery platform is ready for me." But then you are in the position of it's the TV of today. Do you invest today at potentially a lower dollar, maybe unknown ROI and reap benefits later? Or do you wait and have the late mover where it's now more expensive, everybody wants to be on there and your ROI is going to be worse than if you had tried it?

 

Peter Crosby (18:13):

And forgive my ignorance, but how does TikTok make its money off of this? I'm sure there's some sort of percentage involved, but I'm just wondering if there's also kind of a beef just to play or something like that. What's the base cost of it?

 

Malvika Jaggi (18:28):

So the base cost is very similar to an Amazon. So they have their version of the referral fee, so there's a TikTok shop platform fee, which is typically about 6%. And then outside of that, it's on the brand to do their typical D2C P&L. How much is shipping going to cost? How much am I going to sell it at? What's my promo going to be? But then it's also about the returns of do you count it just to the sale? Do you count it to how many impressions that video drove? And it's a much more effective CPM. And that's where I think the door opens into how do you measure success?

 

Peter Crosby (19:00):

Which is a great segue to our next question. Amazing. You should be a podcast host. So tell us about the metrics, especially when those metrics are necessary to be able to drive the right level of investment, the halo effects and things like that. What is sort of that package that you folks at OneTree Brands think about that will help your champion make the business case to keep going?

 

Malvika Jaggi (19:26):

Yeah, I think the first is to have the muscle to be ready to talk about this as a marketing engine first. We tell almost everybody that the goal here is it's still a discovery marketing platform first and a commerce channel second. It's not to say that you won't make money, but you won't make money out of the game. If you look at it in isolation, that's not going to happen. And so I think performance, then you have to measure it across the different pieces of the puzzle. Visibility, reach and impressions first and foremost. How many millions of impressions are you getting? How many more products can people see from your brand? How many more PDP views are you getting? Which then translates into how many affiliates are wanting to participate with you? How many videos are you able to generate? How many samples are you able to give out?

 

(20:09):

And then that finally gets into how many sales are you able to drive on the platform and off of the platform? So it's almost three layers, and I think measuring success is also a key part of adapting the ways of working. For each brand, that could look very different because then you need to make sure you have sufficient content, creators, and creative variation to see what's going to resonate for the platform.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (20:29):

Have you seen that brands are using UGC content that they get from TikTok on other channels? Is there a rule against that? How you can use UGC videos across a Target or an Amazon? Are they trying to leverage it on their own sites? Is there a cross-pollination of that UGC content? I'm just curious.

 

Malvika Jaggi (20:51):

There

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (20:51):

Is a

 

Malvika Jaggi (20:52):

Slight cross-pollination of the content,

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (20:54):

But

 

Malvika Jaggi (20:54):

I think brands have also realized

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (20:56):

That

 

Malvika Jaggi (20:56):

Each content also has to stay in its own home, if you will, because of the audience that's there. I think a great example is also to think about the social content aspect on TikTok alongside your TikTok shop. So a lot of brands that are doing it well, they're doing both hand-in-hand. So they have the UGC element and then they have their branded videos as well. And funny enough, going back to how can brands educate on their voice, they can use their branded content to coach the creators to say, "Hey, these are the types of things that work well. This is how you talk about the product," to guide in

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:30):

That

 

Malvika Jaggi (21:31):

Voice almost. So it's twofold.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:33):

And is there a cadence for that kind of content? I feel like this is something that it's like you have to stay on top of daily, weekly. It's not like a PDP where sometimes brands only update them once a year. So it's a totally different cadence. What does that cadence look like?

 

Malvika Jaggi (21:51):

I think the best in class cadence is to post multiple times a week because even the best of the best creators, affiliates, influencers will tell you, consistency is absolutely key. You can have a viral video right next to four others that have gotten a thousand views.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:10):

I knew you were going to say that.

 

Peter Crosby (22:12):

Damn it.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:14):

I'm sure brands are like, "Oh my gosh."

 

Peter Crosby (22:16):

Yeah.

 

Malvika Jaggi (22:18):

Yeah, I think it's also that advantage. Brands who are able to take advantage of the virality, react in that moment, those are the ones who really see the benefit. They can then really stretch the muscle to say, "Hey, look, I posted this content, which then got five, 10, 15 million views, and it drove so many more people to my TikTok shop. While I didn't convert this first time, I can now create an offering that might be unique on the platform to drive that conversion, to drive that trial even if they're brand new consumers."

 

Peter Crosby (22:48):

Do you think of affiliate marketing in this case as sort of micro targeting because you're doing business with a bunch of affiliates that have narrower audiences or is Kim Kardashian also available as an affiliate in TikTok shop? What are the people that you can access?

 

Malvika Jaggi (23:08):

Yeah, so it's funny. A lot of creators are not affiliates on the platform. While they will be eligible, they probably have never converted to become an affiliate. You have to officially sign up to be an affiliate on the platform and you have to require a certain number of followers and then you can start to build sales. But to your point, the goal and success on TikTok Shop will come from the quality as well as the quantity. So if you did a Kim Kardashian, you could get two videos from her maybe if your brand budget allowed it. But with that same brand budget, you could possibly get 20,000 videos anywhere else with some of these smaller creators. And the algorithm's going to fuel both the quantity and the quality, but you can't have one and not have the other. So we always tell brands, "You're better off having a hundred people talk about your product than having two very good people talk about your product."

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (24:00):

Well, that goes to the halo effect measurement piece, which I wanted to deep dive into on the measurement side of things. So let's say you have a brand who's done a bunch of TikTok on the branding side and then has a TikTok shop and aren't making any money on the platform, which they understand. How are they measuring the halo effect? Are they saying, "Hey, we did this activation. We saw an increase in Amazon sales two months later, and so we're kind of matching the two." How does that, from an analytics team perspective, how do you even really pinpoint that or is it just directional?

 

Malvika Jaggi (24:37):

Yeah, it's funny. I think if you do it the right way, if you really wanted to sit down and do it, you do it the true take all of your marketing levers, figure out which one's working, which one's driving more. But I think in a very simplistic view, brands can take a look at what performance they're doing on TikTok shop and measure their branded search volume on Amazon. Naturally, if your branded search volume starts to go up, you can say one is driving the other. And so now you have more search volume, you're able to convert more on Amazon. It's easiest to measure D2C and Amazon, and there are a lot of tools out there too that today let you connect to both sides so you can see your Amazon sales, your D2C sales versus TikTok so that you can create that correlation. I think what becomes tricky is when you start talking traditional retail, how do you drive the impact the TikTok view drove to your Walmart sale at the end of the day?

 

Peter Crosby (25:27):

You talked earlier about the winners being flipped in TikTok shop, that a lot of it is these smaller, more nimble brands, the challenger brands, et cetera, that really know. And I was wondering, do you have examples of best practices where you've seen larger brands get out of their own way or figure out how to make it happen faster and more nimble in a way that really gives them... Because then they do have some advantage because of their budget and heft and things like that. I'm wondering if there are sort of hints for those of our listeners that are trying to figure that out at the big one.

 

Malvika Jaggi (26:02):

Yeah, I think I'll take you back to this PetIQ team. They're a very good example of they look at it as a holistic ecosystem. So they're not considering only one lever at any given point. They almost do a learning, a test and learn quickly to start to identify, okay, this is working, this is not working, and then they start to implement it across for each different shop. So if you think about it is, let's see, what product to list on TikTok, right? There are two approaches a brand can take. One, a brand can be like, no, this is the only product that I want to list. The other approach is, let me start by listing one, let me test it out for a couple of months, and then I can always shift to a different product, take the learnings of the platform and go with it.

 

(26:41):

So I think it's about that, I go back to it, the adaptability aspect, to not come in with a closed-minded of, I only want to do this at this with people only saying this, you're not going to succeed on the platform. I'll give you an example of small brands too. The one reason that they're also able to do so well is because they push the boundaries. They can have their CEO go live and talk about the product once a week because that's just easy for them to do, but it's also to show the passion that they have for the brand, and then they make a lot of time and investment into building the relationships with the affiliates. Whereas in a lot of larger brands, it's like you think about keywords and you're like, more people search for my keywords and the system can do everything.

 

(27:21):

The human interaction almost goes backwards.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:24):

I'm literally imagining the amount of emails it would take to get the CEO of a large CPG company on TikTok.

 

Peter Crosby (27:31):

And then you probably wouldn't want that person on it anyway because they're the business, not the heart. You need the heart, and that gets a little more obscure as you grow.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:44):

Yeah. Malvika, to close us out, let's look into the crystal ball. Where do you see social commerce in the next five years? Where do you see it going? Especially in the world of Agentic, do you think it's going to be more important, less important? Would love your crystal ball predictions?

 

Malvika Jaggi (28:03):

I think the crystal ball is going to be a little guided by what's happening. I think there was recently an article that said TikTok shop is now larger than some of the major retailer.coms that have been around for a long time. And so if you see that in just a span of 18 months, I think the game is going to come down to social commerce, agentic commerce, and your traditional digital commerce best practices all put together. No brand is going to be able to succeed without all three levers. You need somebody to introduce you to a product for you to then be able to do the research for it, to then finally be like, "Hey, this is where I'm going to purchase it." It's no longer, I think, what is it, the full funnel journey. It's a very multi-touchpoint journey, and brands need to be on all sides of it.

 

(28:48):

There's no secret sauce to say, "Hey, if I only did Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop, I'm going to succeed for the next 10 years." I think that's going to be the big crystal ball is they need to be able to adapt to all sides and every industry will be different. Every platform's going to pay a different role for every single different industry.

 

Peter Crosby (29:06):

Yep. Sounds well.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:07):

Well said. With the same amount of resources and dollars that they've had for the past 10 years, just to add.

 

Malvika Jaggi (29:14):

Yeah, and maybe a team structure that's also from 10 years ago.

 

Peter Crosby (29:20):

And on that note, have a great day, everyone. Well, I feel like, I don't know, Lauren, I mean, you talk a lot about the organizational shifts that need to happen, and the scenario, Mavka, that you put out really underscores that, that this funnel squished, pulled, wrapping around itself, needs a sort of holistic approach with a shared set of incentives. Otherwise, it's just going to bulge... I'll stop with the image.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:54):

Where are these analogies going to?

 

Peter Crosby (29:57):

I know, I know.

 

Malvika Jaggi (29:57):

You're spot on.

 

Peter Crosby (29:59):

But When you think about that, that's where it really does have to refocus on the consumer's journey, where, how, when they're going to discover, search, shop, buy, re-buy. It's sort of the exciting stuff of it because when you unlock that and when you get the fundamentals in place to be able to fuel that, and that's part of the product content foundation of all this, that's just one piece, but that there's some foundational things you need in place to be able to do that. Lauren would say, and also probably some organizational shifts that need to happen.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (30:40):

A thousand percent. I mean, organizations weren't built for this world. They were built for in-store shopping. They still exist around in-store shopping, and they've made some progress towards digital in the past 30 years or so, but this is a fundamental shift. I love how you always call out shared goals, Peter. I mean, if you don't have shared accountability, then everybody's working against each other inside the team, and that's the easiest way to get everybody marching towards the same thing. Focus on the consumer, don't distinguish between channel what is the ultimate goal of the business. Malvika, you've seen that at Reckitt at Red Bull at every company you've been at, right?

 

Malvika Jaggi (31:18):

Yeah, no, 100%. I think one validation point to this is also the voice of the consumer that TikTok's actually brought into the mix. Now, it not only ranks a shop, it also ranks a product based on what the consumers are saying about a product. If a consumer is consistently saying something negative about a product, you actually have to modify your product content to make sure that you're positioning it the right way or correcting your product content to make sure that they understand if it's a usage error, which I think comes back to this whole full circle journey of you can't update product content once a year anymore, you have to do it on the fly consistently so people use the product correctly. But then also, Peter, to your question, brands are also positioned the right way because you're now adapting with the new use case of a product.

 

Peter Crosby (32:04):

Just so I understand what you were saying, TikTok is actively monitoring the products that are going through the affiliate program, and if some are not performing or getting dinged or whatever, they might even say, "Sorry, this campaign needs to stop," or is that what's... Wow,

 

Malvika Jaggi (32:24):

Okay. They'll say, "This product is temporarily suspended," or, "This product is temporarily on a warning. You need to reevaluate before you continue doing this program."

 

Peter Crosby (32:35):

That's amazing. It'd be interesting to see how that works as it scales, but if they've, to a degree, automated that process and they get flagged, that's fascinating to me because I think that's TikTok saying, "This world, this community that we're building around this process, we really value more than..." Well, I won't say more than the revenue, but that it's important that it be treated well or you won't get the revenue. Then bringing partners along on that journey, I think maybe some of that thinking can feed its way back into the larger marketplaces that really need the same amount of care and thought.

 

Malvika Jaggi (33:22):

Yeah, and I think it also goes back, a lot of brands launch on Amazon, they start early because they want to see the feedback their product's going to get. When the product gets poor ratings and reviews, then they're like, "Okay, hold on a second. Before I do a national launch, maybe let me rethink this. Maybe let me change my positioning so that I go with my best foot forward." I think it's exactly that. You need to start with your best foot forward.

 

Peter Crosby (33:43):

Do you folks monitor that on behalf or with your clients so that you're able to bring that feedback back? You are helping them with that maximizing the value effort?

 

Malvika Jaggi (33:56):

Yeah, and even if you don't want to, you have to for the TikTok platform because they rate every shop too. Outside of all product ratings, TikTok Shop also rates every shop in terms of the kind of customer service you're providing, in terms of your fulfillment capabilities, in terms of everything you're offering on the site, and you get a rating out of five. The lower your rating gets, the more things get taken away from you. Imagine you almost lose access to premium placements if you're not putting your best foot forward.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:27):

Can you imagine retailers adapt that? Ooh, boy.

 

Peter Crosby (34:31):

Really? Oh, boy. But then retailers -

 

Malvika Jaggi (34:32):

Yeah, that's like a line review every two weeks, basically.

 

Peter Crosby (34:36):

And retailers would need to have the data to be able to do that. And that's another thing. TikTok is a software company, is an experienced company. Data company. Yeah, and a data company.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:48):

Wow.

 

Peter Crosby (34:48):

Well, Malika, this has been amazing and really edifying and a lot of fun. Thanks for yet another way of giving back to the DSI community because we really appreciate it and I know our listeners will too.

 

Malvika Jaggi (35:05):

No, of course. No, it was a great time.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (35:07):

Thanks so much, Malvika.

 

Malvika Jaggi (35:08):

Of course.

 

Peter Crosby (35:10):

Thanks so much to Malvika for giving back. Continue your DSI journey by becoming a member at digitalshelfinstitute.org. Thanks for being part of our community.