Ashley McCollum | GM of Tasty @ Buzzfeed

TL;DR

Ashley McCollum, GM of Tasty at BuzzFeed, recounts how being the youngest and most inexperienced person in the room enabled her to challenge industry conventions. She describes ignoring two senior advertising executives who told her Tasty could never prove bottom-of-funnel sales, and instead pushing forward with a full-funnel advertising solution.

Key insights

• 90% of people in a typical room have heard of Tasty, and roughly 50% have made a recipe at home, indicating high brand awareness and conversion from video to actual cooking.
• Tasty’s audience uploads photos of themselves cooking the recipe within hours of a video being posted, demonstrating a direct path from top-of-funnel content to bottom-of-funnel purchase behavior, whi
• Copycats replicated Tasty’s top-down fast format within a year, creating a commoditized marketplace; McCollum concluded Tasty had to provide more value to advertising partners beyond reach.