Louis Krubich and Jeff Frommer Of MALKA Media: How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales

An Interview With Orlando Zayas

Find your North Star and make it the center point of all the ideas you pursue. Gut check every idea from digital banners to the CTA in your TV spot against it. This will ensure your brand is being communicated the same way from everyone that experiences it.

Louis Krubich is the Founder and CEO of MALKA Media who began his dream of starting a creative studio in 2012. Louis saw an increasing gap in quality video content at digital scale across Fortune 500 clients and decided to make his vision a reality. Starting in 2012 with himself and a handful of employees, MALKA began by collaborating on content with clients focused on B2B content assets, that scaled from internal distribution needs to forward facing content. He has now grown MALKA Media to over 165 full time creatives across studios in Jersey City and Santa Monica. Leading the production of over 5 award winning feature documentaries, over 20 digital stack shows and up to a thousand digital assets a month. Louis is a proven thought leader for all clients across networks, agencies, brands, publishers, entertainment and networks.

Before MALKA, Jeff developed his experience across multiple industries including finance and telecom before landing at Adobe. He spent 5 successful years there as a business leader weaving creative and technology to digitally transform companies across the Fortune 500. The operational prowess and strategic mentality he gained allowed MALKA to bootstrap a scale-fast business that has become the future model for digital media and entertainment. His success can be attributed to a few mottos he lives by; “knowledge is power” “impossible has many options” and “time kills all deals”.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Louis Krubich: While producing content at MTV Networks, I saw first-hand how much money and resources were being spent on hiring a multitude of outside production teams for singular projects. Seeing just how inefficient and costly this process was, I decided to start Malka, where I created an entirely in-house media company to produce Hollywood-level content. Malka gained their first client during the NFL player’s strike, with sports agent Pat Capra, and began shooting content and producing footage for all of Capra’s off-field charity work. For the first year, I maxed out all of my credit cards buying the necessary equipment to be an entirely in-house production studio, we leveled up from 1 employee in a 1 bedroom apt to 4 employees in a 2 bedroom apartment. As we scaled to 3x retainer clients we moved into our first official studio and Jeff Frommer came in as Malka’s first investor. From there, Jeff helped Malka expand their service offerings and ability to scale with their clients to grow to where they are today.

Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?

Jeff Frommer: One “mistake” we made early on in our business was when we worked with Johnson & Johnson on their branded Band-Aid content for the new Star Wars movie. We got so excited and were so eager, that we worked overnights all week long, editing the film footage to put Band-Aids over the Storm Troopers’ faces. Needless to say, Johnson & Johnson loved the results and thought it was hilarious, but they couldn’t use any of the footage — we were a bit immature at the time and didn’t understand the licensing issues or ask if they had rights to the film themselves. We realized there were more levels of marketing and bigger processes than what we were used to from our previous social marketing experience. If only the world got to see this work!

Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

Louis Krubich: Brian Dailey gave Malka its first contract doing Madden highlights/simulations for ESPN, which fueled the company’s initial growth. Dailey is Malka’s strongest example of what it means to be a true creative leader. He portrays patience & understanding throughout all creative collaborations — a necessary quality when creating cohesive and efficient teams that are able to have mutual understanding and seamless communication workflows.

What do you think makes your company stand out?

Jeff Frommer: In the world of content, most studios either make big TV commercials or produce lower level UGC style ads. There’s this middle tier that brands need to create high quality digital content for the always-on consumer that requires agile collaboration between various creative capabilities typically done by multiple companies. By bringing all these together under one roof and applying Hollywood level production capabilities and agile workflows on top of some serious technology, we can deliver content at scale that meets the brand equity standards clients expect and deliver at a digital cost and in time to participate in the conversation.

Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?

Jeff Frommer:

1. Good isn’t good enough
2. Impossible has many options
3. Time kills all deals

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Jeff Frommer: Consumers are no longer getting their information from trusted sources and publications but from creators and influencers across the various social channels. We think the biggest opportunity is around personal finance, helping people make better financials by connecting them with trusted creators spread across the social verse in one aggregated destination. When you’re looking to make a decision about a big life changing moment like buying a home or something smaller, like if you could save money by making coffee at home versus the $5 slow-drip down the street, getting the right information instead of seeing cat videos and people balancing on crates is an ideal scenario.

Here is the main question of our series. Can you please tell us the 5 things you need to create a highly successful career as a digital marketer? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Jeff Frommer:

1. Find your North Star and make it the center point of all the ideas you pursue. Gut check every idea from digital banners to the CTA in your TV spot against it. This will ensure your brand is being communicated the same way from everyone that experiences it.
2. Prototype. If you were a developer, you’d create a small sample size of users and test changes against them before rolling it out to everyone. Don’t be scared for people to tell you it didn’t work. Fail fast because to win you need to be a part of cultural conversations that are fleeting and if you overthink how your brand shows up, you’re joining a conversation that’s already dead.
3. Act as if you have no budget. You’re the CEO of a startup in your basement and you have no money. How would you accomplish the same goal? This is a great brainstorming technique as it forces you to hack your way in and then you can expand the idea by pouring dollars on it.
4. Rising tides raise all ships. Find a partner that makes sense and build relationships with them so you both win. The most successful campaigns are the collaborations because you’re tying two fan bases into one relatable thread. Find it, pull it and repeat.
5. Look towards future generations and outside the U.S. What’s your 13-year-old nephew doing with all his time? What platform is he using to communicate with his friends? Don’t become a boomer. The bottom always influences up and your next customer will be the one who spent their time doing something you couldn’t imagine having been doing at their age. No one got TikTok, now they have over 1B users and brands are scrambling to figure it out. Also look at high growth markets. Consumers in China will spend $300B on live commerce shopping. The U.S is less than 10% of that. Don’t assume that’s a regional behavior.

What books, podcasts, videos or other resources do you use to sharpen your marketing skills?

Louis Krubich: We’re lucky enough to be surrounded by extremely talented, smart, creative and innovative people, most of whom are leaders in their respective industries. The best learning tools for me are those people, watching them, seeing them work in person. Whether they are clients or creative partners, it is important to stay connected to people who are constantly evolving and making an impact at every industry level. In the content space, it is imperative to have constant communication with smart and successful clients, partners and those that inspire, as this is the best way to learn and grow. I truly believe in the younger generation, creatives just coming into the space have just as much to offer and qualities to learn from as senior leaders who have been in the space for 20 years.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Louis Krubich: I would change the overall impact of social media. The statistics of anxiety and depression stemming from the way social media affects men and women is a factor Malka would like to change, especially being leaders in the programming space for social platforms. Social media is a good thing, offering worldly information and connection that should far exceed the negative aspects, so it is deeply important to Malka to change the experience people have on a daily basis into a profoundly positive one.

How can our readers further follow your work?

Louis Krubich: Check out our site, www.malkamedia.com and follow us on Instagram @malkamedia. We are also on LinkedIn and share new projects and brand developments.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!