Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Kim Chappell is Chief Brand Officer at Bobbie, the mom-founded infant formula brand that’s crossed $100M in revenue and is trying to change how formula gets talked about in America. In this episode, she breaks down how Bobbie built a brand parents are proud to buy in a category that used to be driven by guilt, and why trust beats sheer creative volume when the old Meta scale-button playbook stops working.
For DTC founders, CMOs, and performance marketers scaling a trust-heavy product in a crowded category.
Inside the episode:
- Why Bobbie treated infant formula as a culture problem, not just a product problem
- How the team thinks about brand vs performance now that the old Meta-only growth playbook has weakened
- What “learn more” looks like when your customer journey is messy, delayed, and omnichannel
- How Bobbie chooses the few advocacy lanes it can credibly own, then actually follows through
- Why the Cardi B partnership worked, and how it turned celebrity into conversation share, trust, and policy momentum
Who this is for: Operators building in regulated, trust-sensitive, or education-heavy categories where brand has to do real work before performance can convert.
What to steal:
- Put performance, organic, creator, and lifecycle under one brand story
- Treat education as part of conversion, not a nice-to-have
- Pick fewer cultural or political lanes, but show up with receipts when you enter them
Timestamps
00:00 Performance marketing has changed
03:00 Building Bobbie from scratch
06:00 Removing the stigma around formula
08:00 Why Bobbie understood the customer
10:00 Transparency as brand strategy
12:00 Brand vs performance
15:00 The omnichannel customer journey
18:00 Choosing the right advocacy lanes
21:00 Community-led brand action
23:00 Building awareness in a small market
26:00 How the Cardi B partnership happened
29:00 Measuring the campaign’s impact
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.png)
.svg){kind=icon}
.svg)
.svg)
