Summary
Welcome to another episode of the Performance Marketing Spotlight! This week, host Marshall Nyman sits down with Tricia Mahoney, Chief Marketing Officer at Twisted X Global Brands. Tricia shares her unique journey into marketing, the challenges and rewards of building three footwear brands from the ground up, and why Twisted X’s partnership-driven, retailer-first approach is both thrilling and demanding. Dive into insights on digital marketing strategy, influencer collaborations, and the ever-evolving role of AI in creative processes. If you’re curious about how an authentic, partnership-based brand navigates performance marketing in today’s fast-paced world, you won’t want to miss this conversation.
About Our Guest
Tricia Mahoney, CMO of Twisted X Global Brands, leads integrated marketing, branding, communications and creative services for brands, Twisted X, Twisted X Work, Black Star boots, and CellSole.
As the only female C-suite member of Twisted X’s leadership team, Mahoney is widely known as a trailblazer, one who graciously and elegantly goes against the grain. Peers eagerly anticipate her bold and thoughtful “what ifs” which strike a unique chord to the all too frequent “why nots” of corporate America.
With this change-agent spirit, Mahoney has evolved challenger brands to champions, elevated beloved brands to high-flying, household names—all the while empowering her peers and mentees to redefine success.
Since joining Twisted X in 2019, Mahoney has orchestrated the successful introduction of major collections and new comfort technologies. Her leadership has been instrumental in growing brand awareness. Under her guidance, Twisted X has earned more than 75 prestigious awards in corporate excellence, marketing and creative innovation.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in business management, Mahoney began her career in high-tech marketing with powerhouse companies, Leo Burnett and CMGI. She then transitioned to B2C, founding her own style and inspiration companies, which expanded her knowledge and experience across product development, manufacturing marketing and operations. Another career pivot led Mahoney to work agency-side at TM Advertising, serving a variety of clients and then client side at Mr. Cooper.
With each experience, Mahoney further honed her poise and agility to navigate rough waters, while at the same time, staying true to her belief that “all boats rise,” if championing people.
Mahoney has been recognized by the AFA as a “Shining Star,” was honored as a Top 50 Women Leaders in Consumer Products & Retail by Women We Admire, named one of PRNews’s Top Woman in Marketing as well as received the Stevie Award for Most Innovative Woman of the Year. Most recently, she has been named a finalist for the American Marketing Association’s CMO of the Year.
In her spare time, this two-time published author has written her third book, Trust the Path, and is drafting its companioning TV/Movie script. Trust The Path is her story, of her personal hell which lead her to her ultimate unveiling of self as she found healing, spirit, purpose, and truth. She is seeking representation. Learn more at www.TrustThePath.com.
Transcript
Marshall Nyman [00:00:01]:
Hello and welcome to the performance Marketing Spotlight. I’m your host, Marshall Nyman, Founder and CEO of Naimo and Company. Each episode I bring you someone with deep experience in the performance marketing space where they share their career journey and insights about the industry. Today I have Tricia Mahoney from Twisted X Global Brands. Welcome to the podcast.
Tricia Mahoney [00:00:21]:
Oh, thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here.
Marshall Nyman [00:00:24]:
Happy to have you on. Let’s get right to it. Can you introduce yourself to the audience?
Tricia Mahoney [00:00:28]:
Sure can. I am Tricia Mahoney, Chief Marketing Officer for Twisted X Global Brands.
Marshall Nyman [00:00:34]:
And how did you get your start in marketing?
Tricia Mahoney [00:00:36]:
I got my start in marketing when I was a senior in college. I just took marketing as an elective and it made sense and everything clicked for me. After college there were no jobs so I had to waitress for a while. But when I was able to land my first marketing job, I have been pivoting from agency side and clients client side my entire career.
Marshall Nyman [00:01:00]:
I think you’re the first person I talked to that’s actually graduated with a marketing degree and ended up in marketing.
Tricia Mahoney [00:01:06]:
Well, it’s funny, I didn’t graduate with a marketing degree, but that one class literally cinched it for me and it just, it, it was a language I understood and it was sounded really fun. So I was all in at that point.
Marshall Nyman [00:01:18]:
So what led you to join Twisted X Global Brands?
Tricia Mahoney [00:01:20]:
So one afternoon I was sitting on my back patio and I got a call from a recruiter telling me about a possible job that, that he was recruiting for. It was for a footwear brand in the western industry and asked if I was interested. I laughed and said, you know, gosh, yes, I’m always interested in a conversation here. Number one, I don’t have western experience and number two, I don’t have footwear experience. And he said, we’re very well aware they are interested in growing the brands within the family and they’re looking for a brand builder. So it took about two conversations and one meeting with executives and I landed the job and been here for about six years now.
Marshall Nyman [00:02:00]:
Tell us a little bit about TwistedX Global Brands and what makes them unique.
Tricia Mahoney [00:02:03]:
TwistedX Global Brands is a family of footwear brands. The master brand in the family is twistedx. Twistedx serves the western and rural community with everything from cowboy boots to casuals. Next in the family is TwistedX Work. TwistedX Work spun off from TwistedX about four years ago. It is our fastest growing category and, and it serves everything from light to heavy duty work. And the third brand in the Family is Blackstar. Blackstar Boots is a higher end western cowboy boot brand for women and what.
Marshall Nyman [00:02:41]:
Makes the company so unique? And since you’re not an online brand and you’re actually working directly with your retailers.
Tricia Mahoney [00:02:46]:
Yeah, that is, it is both a blessing and a huge challenge for us. So my CEO Prasad Reddy has decided that Twisted X and all of the brands in the family were not direct to consumers. So it makes our job interesting and challenging all the time. Our job here is to garner awareness and exposure for all of the brands and help sell boots and shoes through all of our retailers all around the nation.
Marshall Nyman [00:03:16]:
And so in your role you’re supporting all these third parties?
Tricia Mahoney [00:03:19]:
Yes. So in my role I am responsible for corporate marketing as well as any marketing efforts for any of the retailers in our network. Sometimes that includes supporting them with photography, sometimes it’s helping them where we’re driving our paid efforts to their.coms for the conversion. We’ve had a number of instances over these times where especially like if I take it back to Covid timeframe, we actually shifted the department to be both corporate and kind of like an ad hoc agency. And that model has basically stuck since COVID time. And it really serves us very well and it serves our. The relationship that we have with our retailers as well because we’re driving to them and giving them the conversions instead of holding it for us.
Marshall Nyman [00:04:14]:
Reminds me a little bit of the franchise model.
Tricia Mahoney [00:04:16]:
Yeah, it is, in a way. Yeah.
Marshall Nyman [00:04:18]:
So what is your approach to digital marketing strategy? And since it is such a unique business.
Tricia Mahoney [00:04:23]:
So we do have again, unique. I mean, I feel like we’ve said this word a number of times since we’ve been talking here, but we really do it very uniquely here. So our paid efforts, actually our organic and our paid efforts we are driving directly to our retailers. So if we have let’s. I’ll give you an example. If we’ve got a paid social campaign for two of our collections within TwistedX or Twisted TwistedX work, we are taking those ad units either directly to the retailers product page or we’re taking them to a landing page on Twisted X with all of those said products and then driving them to the retailer. We work directly with our retailers when we’re doing this so we can have tracking all the way into that conversion because that’s hard for us because we don’t convert on our site. So we rely on the relationships that we have with our retailers and to work with them when we’re running campaigns.
Tricia Mahoney [00:05:21]:
It’s a very collaborative model that we.
Marshall Nyman [00:05:22]:
Have tracking must be a pretty big challenge. How do you measure your marketing activities?
Tricia Mahoney [00:05:28]:
It’s interesting because we rely a lot. I talk about specifically for paid. A lot of it is around just UTMs and trying to track that way. It’s interesting, like working with all of these retailers, they track differently than we do. So we have to really all get on the same page for what it is that we’re tracking, how we’re tracking it, when their campaigns are running. So we’re crystal clear. We also off of our owned properties, whether it is organic or paid, we are tracking anything and everything we possibly can so we can have insights on, you know, what product is most successful, what product is least successful, and just do anything we can in our power to help our retailers. That’s our model.
Tricia Mahoney [00:06:15]:
We have a partnership model.
Marshall Nyman [00:06:16]:
How are you leveraging influencer marketing into your strategy?
Tricia Mahoney [00:06:20]:
Oh, we love influencers. So each brand has its own set of influencers. We treat our influencers. They’re truly part of our department. We have relationships where our influencers are our models for our lifestyle photography. We love to work with very, very authentic influencers, depending on each of the brands. Because each brand has its unique demographic and therefore the influencers are different brand to brand. There’s a little overlap between some of our brands, so sometimes we will cross over.
Tricia Mahoney [00:06:58]:
But influencers are a massive part of our strategy.
Marshall Nyman [00:07:04]:
I love when brands use the influencers in the marketing. I think it’s a great way to add some real trust and transparency with what you’re doing.
Tricia Mahoney [00:07:12]:
Yeah, we actually, we have some, you know, large trade shows. You know, we’ve got a showroom down at the Dallas Market Center. It’s a permanent showroom there. And there’s a couple of really big shows that happen there during, during the year. And when we have shows there, we have events where they’re influencer events. So we really, we try to incorporate them in everything that we’re doing because they are, they’re really, they’re part of our team and we really value them.
Marshall Nyman [00:07:40]:
Outside of influencer marketing, what channels are you very engaged with?
Tricia Mahoney [00:07:45]:
So paid social. So we’ve got a number of websites. Let’s see, we’ve got four websites that I’m responsible for. We’ve got nine social channels, everything from paid social, influencer, and then a lot of the work with the retail partners. So that could be anything. Literally, it could be anything.
Marshall Nyman [00:08:07]:
I guess that makes it fun.
Tricia Mahoney [00:08:09]:
It is fun. Cause I love both agency side and client side. I like client side. Cause you get to dig in A little bit more. But agency side, you’re so fluid with what you’re working on, and I get the best of both worlds. It’s super cool, actually.
Marshall Nyman [00:08:25]:
That sounds like a lot of fun. What’s been your favorite part of working at TwistedX Global Brands?
Tricia Mahoney [00:08:29]:
Building everything from the ground up. So it’s so interesting. I started with a company six and a half years ago, and when I got here, there was an archaic website. We had a couple of social channels that were barely being leveraged, and we had boxes that were extinct, honestly. And it’s been so cool. We have built every single thing from the ground up. And it’s just so fun because I love building and I love a challenge, so. And I’ve, I was able to do it here at Twisted X, and then when we spun up Twisted X Work, it was a whole other brand and then when we acquired Blackstar, it was a third.
Tricia Mahoney [00:09:09]:
So it’s, it’s really fun. And I love the diversity of the brands as well and the demographics that we serve. It’s just, it keeps you on your toes. You’re. There’s a lot to do and it’s, it’s fun.
Marshall Nyman [00:09:22]:
What are some challenges you’re facing as a brand right now?
Tricia Mahoney [00:09:25]:
Well, if you talk about the world where we’re at, tariffs for sure, you know, it’s a, it’s a constant pivot at this minute. My CEO, Prasad Reddy, he is a very interesting, brilliant man. So he’s been in footwear for more than 50 years and he has worked at some of the largest brands in the entire world. And during COVID time, when everyone was pulling back their POs and canceling their POs and their orders, we actually increased. So we took production space at that time and it served us really, really well. So now fast forward to where we are right now with tariffs. Same exact situation happened. People were pulling back, not paying their factories.
Tricia Mahoney [00:10:09]:
We did the exact opposite. Twisted X believes very strongly in partnerships. I talked about that at the retailer level. This also works at the factory level for us. Our factory partners are. They are. We consider them part of the family. Prasad has worked with these factories for decades and decades.
Tricia Mahoney [00:10:29]:
So it’s really, really cool. But we view challenges here differently. At TwistedX, it’s not necessarily a challenge. It’s more of, okay, what’s plan A, what’s plan B and what’s plan C? And then if we move to D, E and F, it’s always a pivot. And the whole point is if we’ve got a challenge, we’re Going to just.
Marshall Nyman [00:10:52]:
Keep pivoting challenges, create opportunities in the market. So it’s one of those things where a lot of brands didn’t have inventory at those periods.
Tricia Mahoney [00:10:59]:
That’s right. And we did. And I love that because that was a massive risk that was taken during that time. But it paid off really well.
Marshall Nyman [00:11:10]:
Well, no risk, no reward.
Tricia Mahoney [00:11:12]:
Exactly.
Marshall Nyman [00:11:14]:
What are some things that you’re most excited about right now in the marketing space?
Tricia Mahoney [00:11:19]:
Oh, my gosh, AI. Gosh. It’s moving so fast. And for us, we are embodying it in the marketing department. For us, it is the first step where the brainstorming happens. It’s what I consider almost like the launching pad for creatives. It’s a way to start your brainstorming with ideas versus a blank page. It has allowed my team to exponentially create faster and more without the burden of starting everything from zero.
Tricia Mahoney [00:12:00]:
We leverage it on everything. A lot of our product descriptions and copy, and it really is a wonderful tool. It’s crazy how fast it’s going, though.
Marshall Nyman [00:12:11]:
Any predictions on the future of performance marketing?
Tricia Mahoney [00:12:14]:
Honestly, I don’t know. AI is going so fast. I mean, it’s changing our world every second. And for performance marketing, I can’t even imagine. I don’t know where it’s going.
Marshall Nyman [00:12:28]:
But you are leveraging now, AI and what you’re doing, is it something that’s providing a lot of value for you or are you still just in the early stages of figuring it out?
Tricia Mahoney [00:12:37]:
Both. So it’s definitely in the early stages, but we are seeing value in what we’re yielding. Like I said, it’s more of. It’s helping the creatives get into their projects and kick off their projects. Even if it doesn’t spit out the most wonderful ideas. Because honestly, it doesn’t. It’s a way of almost weeding out some of the ideas that you wouldn’t do, but that then allows the spark for the creative to happen. So it really is it from a creative standpoint, it really is sparking the creatives.
Tricia Mahoney [00:13:09]:
It’s very tactical, though, when it comes to copy and like product descriptions. It’s because we have a formula for that. So it really follows the formula.
Marshall Nyman [00:13:18]:
Are you using it for any creative assets or just more like text?
Tricia Mahoney [00:13:21]:
More text than anything else, I would say. A tiny, like, sliver of assets. It’s more of removal of items, like an object in photography or changing something that we have. We’re not creating from scratch and using AI creative at this moment. That’s not something. It’s not to the level that it’s useful for us yet at that level.
Marshall Nyman [00:13:47]:
Yeah, it’s still just scratching the surface there. I’ve seen some brands that are using it and I think you can still tell it doesn’t have that human touch.
Tricia Mahoney [00:13:56]:
100%. Yes.
Marshall Nyman [00:13:58]:
And I think that’ll probably be a big challenge going forward is how can brands keep things real and authentic as we just become so deeply ingrained in everything AI.
Tricia Mahoney [00:14:09]:
Yeah. And for, you know, for end consumers, they can sniff that out really fast and you know, no one wants anything that’s inauthentic. And for all of the brands that Twisted X Global Brands family, that is authenticity is core to who we are. I mean we’re serving the western and rural communities. They, they can sniff that out. Like they have zero tolerance for anything that’s inauthentic. Just even specific. Like you know how you’re, you’re attacking your horses like, like it is it.
Tricia Mahoney [00:14:40]:
You have to have it right. You have to be authentic. It has to be right. Or they will. That is not good when it’s not right. Like you can’t make that mistake.
Marshall Nyman [00:14:50]:
I guess that’s why influencers are a big part of what you do.
Tricia Mahoney [00:14:53]:
100% because they live the lifestyle for sure. They know what cowboy hat to wear. They know to wear it forward and not backwards because that happens. There are such intricacies within the western and rural community that. Yeah, it’s critical. Critical. You get it right.
Marshall Nyman [00:15:13]:
Well, I think that’s a good place to end. I appreciate the time today. A big thank you to Tricia for joining the podcast this week. Some great insights to her background and her time at Twisted X Global Brands. Also, a thank you to our producer Leon Sonkin. If you’ve enjoyed this content, please give us a like and follow. Thank you for listening in. I’m Marshall Nyman, host, the Performance Marketing Spotlight and founder and CEO of Nymon Company signing off.
Marshall Nyman [00:15:38]:
Thank you and have a great day.