Consumer
02.26.2021

From Facebook to Wildlife Studios: The Journey of ‘Consumer Growth’ with Robby Andrews – EVP Head of Publishing

Authored by: Nicolette Stanise

In a world where digital product is at the forefront of how we connect, shop, watch, trade, learn, exercise and play, it’s no wonder that product-led growth has evolved as one of the most important and competitive functions for any consumer business today.

Now more than ever, the brilliant minds who often remain behind the scenes at companies like Netflix, TikTok, Amazon and Facebook continue to propel these businesses forward by finding new ways to engage their existing users and grow their customer base. Who are these people you ask? These are the invaluable Growth executives that brands continue to lean heavily on, especially over the last year. But so many still don’t understand the difference between marketing, product, and growth. We find a lot of our clients want a Growth executive but can’t clearly define the meaning of it. Sure, we can simplify it: ‘someone who can grow your customer base’. However, most of the world is still trying to unpack these two secrets: how is it actually done, and in turn, how do you evaluate the best talent to get the job done?

This function has continued to see exponential growth over the last several years. The demand for impactful, next gen leaders within this role has skyrocketed, and has become highly competitive. In this Q&A we’ll unpack exactly what the consumer Growth function embodies with one of the best in industry: Robby Andrews. Andrews recently joined from the place that does product-led consumer growth the best: Facebook. We’ll understand how to shape and reshape your organization, how to evaluate talent, and what the future of gaming will look like with his influence.

What are the main objectives of a growth executive and team?

The goal of a good growth team is to basically help its product or service reach its full potential. To do that, you need to understand what your core product value is.

In other words, you should be able to answer this simple question: “Why do people use your product?” The ability to maximize impact (and achieve your goal of your product or service reaching full potential) is centered on being able to answer this simple question, and that is dependent on understanding the “why.” Companies (and teams) that do are able to drive exponential growth, and the ones that don’t, never reach their full potential.

Understanding the “why” and optimizing your business around this objective is a powerful tool. A great example of this is Amazon, which optimizes its entire business around two key elements: Greater Selection and Lower Prices. These are the foundational elements of Amazon’s “customer obsession.” It is also the basis for what created the Amazon Flywheel, which is the economic engine that uses growth (and scale) to improve the customer experience through (again) greater selection and lower prices. You could argue there is a 3rd element (speed) or a 4th (value), but you get the idea…

Flywheels are powerful, but a simpler way to describe growth is to focus on what you are trying to accomplish. In this sense, everything we do is centered around 3 key questions:

How do you get people in the front door (Acquisition)?

How do you get them to an “aha” moment as quickly as possible (Activation)?

How do we deliver core product value as often as possible (Engagement/Retention/Repeat Purchases)?

You do different things along each part of the customer funnel, but the framework is simple: Focus on the user and demonstrate value with your product or service.

What advice do you give to CEOs who want to hire a great Growth executive?

In my opinion, they need to understand that this is not just a marketing role. A lot of companies confuse growth teams for just being user-acquisition teams. However, great growth teams encompass three core elements: Acquisition, Activation and Engagement. The skillset required to do this well is unique, as really great growth teams need to sit at the intersection of product, data and marketing. CEOs and leadership teams need to make sure that this is a core part of the organization. In many ways, growth teams can set the tone for the culture around the importance of being a data-driven organization. My advice on how to set up a growth team is to actually make sure it includes all aspects of growth. Facebook was good at elevating growth to have that seat at the table and sit with the core product teams. Growth teams are the voice of your marginal user, and core product teams tend to be the voice of your power user. Oftentimes, as a result of that framework, your growth teams are building for a different audience than your core product teams. Core product teams are really thinking about ‘what’s the next feature?’, ‘what can I add to my already existing product or service that will be better or make the experience more valuable for my existing customers?’ — where growth teams are focused on ‘how we make onboarding easier and how we show the value that this new product or service provides early on’. If you think of it in that regard, each team is solving for different problems, because they are building for different audiences.

Why do you think this skill and function has seen explosive demand over the past several years?

I think it is because it works. Silicon Valley is known for innovation, but it also likes to replicate success. And that is why we are seeing the demand. However, to be successful, it is important to ensure that growth teams are set up for success, and that is where I still see a lot of mistakes. Again, as I mentioned before, a lot of companies confuse growth teams for just being user-acquisition teams, however, if done well, it is much more than that.” Simply stated, great growth teams are analogous to traditional consumer marketing, which consists of three elements: (1) Get people in the front door and get them to the ‘aha’ moment as quickly as possible; (2) Get them to experience the product values as often as possible; and (3) Make a dedicated growth team part of the culture. The success of companies such as Facebook have built a dedicated growth team and have made it a key aspect of the organization as a whole. This has landed itself to being adopted more widely across Silicon Valley and to other businesses even outside of the valley itself.

What do you think makes a really great growth leader?

I think it goes back to the voice of the marginal user and the fact that you need to approach products with empathy. First, great growth teams do this by understanding how to make things easier for people. Second, they need to clearly understand the product value and have a deep understanding of why people use your product or service. Third, you need to remove the barriers that get in the way of people getting to experience that value. Additionally, great growth leaders also need to be very detail-oriented and data-driven. For example, at Facebook, we had this saying on the growth team of ‘fight for every inch’, the idea behind that being every small iterative improvement matters. Then, it’s about leveraging data to drive decision-making and ruthlessly prioritize it. Determine what your goal is, why it matters, and then ruthlessly prioritize your roadmap and team’s priorities in a way that allows you to execute flawlessly.

The last point I’ll make is that I think great growth leaders need to optimize their teams to be very, very data driven. I can’t stress this enough! The key to being data-driven is making sure you’re optimizing around the right objectives and you’re measuring things properly. Then, you need to constantly use the data to reevaluate and reprioritize your biggest areas of opportunity.

What are some of the key things you do to evaluate talent for your team and where do you think great talent comes from?

The companies that tend to be good at growth are companies that have “network-effect,” which exists when a product or service gets better as more and more people / partners join the platform itself, like social networks, marketplaces, etc. Other companies that tend to be good at growth are ones that are great at internet marketing, like travel companies, gaming studios and marketplaces. I think growth teams tend to be thought of as just getting people into the front door, but you need to go one or two levels deeper which is around activation and retention.

In terms of key attributes, someone needs to be very analytical, curious and detailed-oriented, as a lot of growth is optimizing existing products and experiences, and that requires data… I think you can teach people product, and growth, but you can’t teach people how to be analytical by nature. More generally, I think one of the biggest predictors of success are people who have a learner mentality. Are you constantly someone who wants to improve? The biggest delta between people that are wildly successful in this area and those who stay at their current level, is their willingness to push themselves to do better, take risks, learn from mistakes and bounce back.

What are some of the big misconceptions about growth?

I think sometimes it has a negative connotation with people who don’t understand what growth teams do. I think the misconceptions come down to the tactics of growth versus the strategy of growth teams and what they’re really all about. It goes back to that framework I mentioned earlier, where really good growth teams are the voice of the marginal user and they understand what product value they provide to their customers. These teams optimize around that framework rather than tactics that people (esp. core product teams) tend to hate, like push notifications, app badges and emails. Those tactics work, and they’re an important component of a successful growth team, but I think what really separates a good growth team from an okay one is what gives growth overall a bad connotation. Those tactics can be misused or abused, but it is not binary, as they can also be part of great experience if done well. We want to change that misconception and move away from tactics versus focusing on the strategy of growth.

How do you evaluate if someone is abusing those tactics?

Ask people: why do people use your product or service? These tactics work, even if they are abused, but to maximize impact, it is important to use these tools the right way. A lot of startups and marketing teams use them as they should, or at least they start out that way. But then they abuse them, so it goes from ‘I’m going to send an email once a week to try to get people back into the platform’ to ‘I’m going to send you an email four times a week to sending an email seven times a week.’ They want to keep extracting value from their customer base, rather than provide value and that is a race to the bottom. A simple framework to solve for this (as a leader, founder, etc.) is to ask teams: (1) What problem are you solving for? (2) Why does it matter? (3) Who are you solving for? And (4) How do you know if you solved it? A more tactical approach is to always ask for a counter-metric. If a team presents you with data on why something is good, they should also be prepared to explain why it is not bad. If they can’t, that is a warning sign because it means they didn’t understand the problem well enough or think through the tradeoffs.

How do you think Facebook prepared you for this role?

I think Facebook pioneered the idea of a modern growth team, and really helped to create the intersection of product, data, and marketing. They were also fairly unique in separating growth from core product, which is key to setting up a growth team for success, because they need to have an equal voice at the table when making key decisions. I had the opportunity to be part of a world-class growth team, with an amazing mentor, while building out the team at Instagram, and operating at a massive scale that only Facebook/Instagram could provide, allowing me to learn best practices all around.

Another thing I will bring with me to  is Facebook’s ‘bottoms up’ culture; the benefits being that you’re empowering the team who are closest to the problems to actually drive decision-making, which if done correctly, ultimately leads to building better products and services and stronger teams. The key to operating as a successful leader in this type of culture is really focusing on the problems and then empowering the team to figure out what the solutions are. To do this well, it is important to make sure you have a strong ‘goal’ culture, where goals ‘ladder up’ to the overall company objectives and teams hold themselves accountable for delivering ‘real’ value for their customers.

I think a great way to end would be to look ahead, specifically to gamification. Why do you think this is in the 3.0 of explosion?

The gaming ecosystem is expanding and becoming much more diverse from console to experiences, there’s an explosion in content, you have learning games, to casual games, to more immersive games to new platforms such as VR. Second, gaming is becoming more and more mobile. Mobile devices and the penetration of smartphones is obviously a huge tailwind for the business at Wildlife. This has become a catalyst for a lot of this expansion of diversity and content itself. Third, games are also becoming more social, especially on mobile devices. This pandemic has shown us that we are inherently social people at our core, and there is always a constant desire for community and connection. I think where gaming plays a role is you go from much more passive consumption of leisure to much more active gameplay, multiplayer gaming and so on. The way to think about gaming in many ways is almost like another avenue to basically compete for people’s time. Part of that is the shift away from TV to mobile. Instead of ‘what do I watch tonight’ it’s now ‘should I either watch this or play a game or do something else’.