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S3E12 with Maggie Sause
231 Plays5 months ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Maggie Sause, Head of Marketing at Red Antler.
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
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Check out the Medbury website: https://www.medburyagency.com/
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Email Meredith: [email protected]
We loved talking with Maggie! ♥️
Follow Maggie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggiesause/
Maggie’s website: https://www.maggiesause.com/
Check out the Red Antler site: https://www.redantler.com/
And read her great content on Medium: https://medium.com/@mjsause/what-we-can-learn-about-brand-from-daniel-day-lewis-9f6c6fde79f0
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:04
Speaker
Hey guys, welcome to Content People. I'm your host Meredith Farley.
00:00:16
Speaker
Maggie, thank you so much for doing this. I have been looking forward to this for days. I'm so excited to talk to you. For anyone listening who doesn't know, could you just say a little bit about who you are and what you do? Of course. First of all, thank you for having me. I am thrilled to be talking with you today. So my name is Maggie Soss. I am the head of marketing at Red Antler, which is a branding agency based in Brooklyn.
00:00:40
Speaker
And my role is really to set the strategic and creative foundation of how we bring our brands to life in market. And really as well to ensure that at a project level, our work is really showing up in the most meaningful way to actually drive our clients' businesses forward, all depending on their goals and objectives for the work.
Diverse Brand Collaborations
00:01:00
Speaker
You guys work with some enormous brands. Can I meme drop a little bit? Is that OK? Yes, please. There's Airbnb, Bonobos, Bombas, I think, and like a million more. It's very cool because we get to work with everything from founders who just have the speed of an idea through to the Googles and MBAs of the world. So it's really a broad spectrum, which keeps things very exciting. And what's cool too is to start to see the thread
00:01:29
Speaker
of commonalities amongst these businesses, regardless of category and scale and size. So it really gives you a really unique perspective on what brand is and how it applies to every kind of size of business and category.
Career Journey and Education
00:01:44
Speaker
Oh my gosh, totally. I'm so excited to pick your brain about it. And I have some very brand specific questions for you. But before we get into that, could you just give folks a little bit of context on your journey up till now? Because I feel like you've had such an interesting career.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, of course. So I grew up on the design side of advertising. So eventually moving into a creative director role, working at shops like VaynerMedia. So I was really producing everything from digital AOR work to social campaigns.
00:02:13
Speaker
a lot of growing new business, very like standard agency stuff. In 2015, I took a year off to be home with my first kid and accidentally stumbled into launching a startup with a good friend, Lindsay Gaiman. I say stumbled because it was very much a personal need driven founder's tale. So we had both started to notice as new moms this gap in really trustworthy product reviews from peers because we were in that phase of motherhood where
00:02:43
Speaker
We were navigating a completely alien product landscape and had absolutely no clue what we needed. And really just found ourselves continually asking our friends what they used, texting, getting sent group Excel sheets and email forward.
00:03:00
Speaker
And that all just really felt like antiquated ways to share recommendations. So for about two years, I focused on raising around, building an MVP, launching the beta of the platform, which essentially offered shoppable trusted product reviews from your sort of self-selected circle of friends. Eventually though, it reached a point where our key performance indicators just weren't showing enough traction. So we called it.
00:03:27
Speaker
But honestly, I wouldn't change a thing about experience because it really unlocked this period of super deep learning for me, especially in human-centered innovation design. So I really fast followed it with a master's at USC's Iovine and Young program in LA, which is really focused on that intersection of engineering, business, and design and how within that overlap innovation happened.
00:03:54
Speaker
So from there, I spent time at a venture studio, which was super exciting from just like a product innovation perspective. I learned a ton about supply chain and product development, but the group really failed to prioritize brand as a critical component of connecting to audiences, which, by the way, likely led to some failed launches for the business. It was very performance marketing driven and
00:04:23
Speaker
as many of you all listening know, that's just not sustainable in this market. So that brought me to Red Antler, where I got to work directly with founders and innovation teams to bring new ideas to market, all while helping them find ways to use brand to drive obsession, as Emily would say.
Brand Strategy and Creativity
00:04:42
Speaker
And when I say Emily, which may come up again, Emily Hayward, who
00:04:45
Speaker
one of the founders of Red Am to really drive obsession with those ideas. And it's been a journey, but a very fun one, though I'm grateful for all the twists and turns because I think it gave me this unique exposure to both the strategy and the creative side of the work, which I think work very importantly in tandem together.
00:05:05
Speaker
Oh man, there's so much you said there. I want to like double click on. I think first off, I want to recommend Emily's book obsessed for anyone listening. I think such a great book, but also I'm really resonating with what you said about.
00:05:20
Speaker
I know I said this to you before we were quitting, but I worked in marketing for 14 years. And I don't think it was till I launched my own agency that I was like, I don't know enough about brand and positioning. And it has been the most powerful driver for me of clarity for me and actually results on the outside. And I'm such a huge believer in it now. And I love the work that you guys are doing. I do think Red Antler is the gold standard of brand agency. What do you think sets Red Antler apart? And why has it been so successful?
Building Consumer Relationships
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think what brand nailer does so differently is treat brand like a living breathing thing versus some finite deliverable. And let me, I can unpack that a little bit because I know it's a little too.
00:06:06
Speaker
I, the way I like to describe this is we treat brand like a verb, not a noun. And I think Red Antler has a bit of a reputation as just a brand agency, but the reality is we see brand is something much, much bigger than the traditional framing, which tends to assume it's a lot of identity systems, maybe the occasional 60 second spot with cut downs. But we really think of brand as an experience. So brands would be living, breathing things that behave out there in the real world.
00:06:35
Speaker
and they build relationships in community and they show up in people's lives every single day, sometimes even intrusively. So we know that what we build has to be of value, has to be more than just serving the purpose of a transaction. And I think that's become super important in the last few years as brands have to work much harder to get people to care. There's a lot of forces working against that from
00:07:00
Speaker
privacy laws to the attention economy to just broadly lower barriers to launch, making more categories up for grabs than ever before. So brand really has to do more than just look like something people like or sound like something that people might like. Instead of treating customers as passive targets, brands needed to treat them as active participants.
00:07:25
Speaker
That's where we get into this idea of intrinsic value, something of value even if the person doesn't become a customer. And what that does is really enable brands to create a relationship outside of the context of the transaction and really put the customer at the center of the brand world and really build those experiences that respond to their need.
00:07:47
Speaker
So we're really driving that resonance and emotional connection and loyalty before we're even asking them to convert or transact with the business. I wrote down like a couple of things you just said there. Treat brand like a verb, not a noun. I love that. And instead of treating customers like a passive target, treat them like an active participant. It's interesting. It's a totally different
00:08:10
Speaker
Headspace to yeah around branding one thing you said something about sometimes brains are almost Intrusive that's it. Can you say more about that? That's so it. Yeah, absolutely something that Gary Vaynerchuk used to say is If you ask somebody on the street a stranger on the street for a dollar They're gonna pause Probably not give it to you. Who knows anyone's guess if you ask a friend for dollar
00:08:40
Speaker
No questions asked. They're happy to give it to you. And that is because you have built a relationship with them. You have established value. You aren't just showing up and asking for something. And when I say intrusive, it could be that brands are showing up and asking for things from consumers every day.
00:09:00
Speaker
and not delivering enough value that sort of establishes the relationship that really gives them the goodwill and the sort of emotional connection to ask for those things on repeat on a daily basis. We're also connected across all of our experiences every day. We're all plugging into
00:09:22
Speaker
a handful, if not dozens of different channels, whether it be social, SMS, Black, WhatsApp, email. We're constantly bombarded with messaging, both in our personal lives and from brands, that
00:09:39
Speaker
our attention is spread extremely thin. So when a brand shows up and engages with us, it needs to be thoughtful and deliberate and balance this idea of delivering that value that isn't so
00:09:55
Speaker
contingent on the product or on a conversion, so that when those moments do arrive, they feel more thoughtful and more balanced. When we think about this idea of delivering value, it can really show up anywhere. It can show up in the high value 60-second spot, but it can also be in an email or an SMS text. It can be in your internal communications to your employees. It can be in your CX strategy.
00:10:22
Speaker
And this doesn't mean we aren't driving conversion and transaction. The idea though is that when we see the role of brand as bigger than only driving conversions and transactions, we really start to build those relationships and begin to unlock much more long-term growth potential, much more powerful LTV, and more sustainable media spends. Because we start to matter to people in a new way, because we brought a little magic into their lives, we built a relationship,
00:10:51
Speaker
It's not so transactional so that when we do show up, people pay more attention and they're much more willing to receive the message. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm going to listen to that three times after. Wednesday is so helpful. And it's making me think too, even like for Midbury's work on brand building for execs and some brands on LinkedIn. It's not our framework. We didn't come up with this, but this idea that even in content, like for every 10 posts, only three should be overtly promotional and seven need to be.
00:11:21
Speaker
providing value, building relationships, sharing a story, educational, helpful content. And I know what you're talking about is so much more beyond just posts. They're talking about like a whole ecosystem of experiences, but it's really, it's so interesting. Thank you for everything you just said there. That's it, right? Like it's the balance between giving and taking and
00:11:43
Speaker
I think that we're coming off the back of an era where we were able to see businesses really explode just performance marketing and paid social campaigns. But I think we're shifting into a period where people are beginning to demand quite a bit more. Their choices are a little bit more thoughtful. And I think that's a better place to be.
00:12:14
Speaker
Hey guys, interrupting this interview for 10 seconds to talk about Medberry.
LinkedIn Branding
00:12:18
Speaker
At Medberry, we work with executives to help them build their brand and tell their stories on LinkedIn. If you're an exec, your LinkedIn profile can be really, really powerful. It can attract top talent, dream clients, and PR for your organization. And it can turn you into a magnet for opportunities that you might be curious about, like board seats, high paying speaking gigs, podcast appearances, writing projects, or even sometimes a new dream job.
00:12:43
Speaker
but you don't have to post super cringy LinkedIn content to get there. It's totally possible to build a brand with great content that you feel excited and proud to put out into the world. Our process starts with an interview. It's actually a lot like being a guest on Content People. We ask strategic questions to draw out your personal stories and expertise. Then we create a brand plan, optimize your profile, and deliver a batch of content to you for review each month. Once you approve it, we post and engage on LinkedIn on your behalf.
00:13:14
Speaker
We're on their building community and you never have to log in unless you want to. Here's a testimonial from a client that we got just a couple weeks ago. I'm reading it off of our website. She said, just want to reiterate how amazing it's been working with you and how happy I am with the content we're putting out on the channel and the credibility and engagement we're building.
00:13:33
Speaker
I've had so many people tell me how much they love what I've been putting on LinkedIn recently. When I tell them I have a team helping me, they can't believe it's not me. It's so in line with what I would write and truly comes from my voice. That is a great client of ours. She's a CEO and founder. To learn more, check out our website. I will throw it in the show notes. It's medberryagency.com. And I'll also include a link to book a 15 minute call with me. Thank you so much for listening. Back to the show.
00:14:05
Speaker
how do you think branding has changed in the last two to three years? And something you just said sparked something that now seems obvious to me that as performance marketing, paid social, et cetera, has gotten more expensive and less effective, we really have to come back to the foundation of brand. And so the pendulum has won.
Experiential Branding
00:14:25
Speaker
Maybe that's not what you're going to say, though. Now that I've changed a bit. Absolutely agree with that. And look, performance marketing is still going to be a critical sort
00:14:35
Speaker
ingredient in the brand mix, but it can't be the only thing that we rely on. And I would really say that the role of branding has definitely changed. A strong brand identity has really just become table stakes. So no matter what stage of business you're in, it's become a little bit more ubiquitous that brands look and sound beautiful and of a certain caliber.
00:15:01
Speaker
But how and where a brand is experienced is now the big thing brands need to achieve. A great example of this, and I know we had spoken about this when we met last week, is when you sign up for Liquid Death's membership program, you literally fill out a bill of sale for your eternal human soul.
00:15:19
Speaker
They could have just used a standard form, made it look super slick, resigned it in the brand ID, but instead they elevated it to a brand experience through storytelling in a really unexpected way. And they delivered the customer value from the jump in the form of this sort of theatrical and humorous engagement.
00:15:40
Speaker
So it's really taking storytelling and experience into a place where you see all of these touch points as opportunities to deliver on that versus just thinking about, OK, we've got an identity system that we feel great about. We've got a performance media spend. Let's just go convert. It has to feel like an experiential ecosystem now more than ever. And my hope is
00:16:09
Speaker
It's a sea change in how brands build those experiences over time because to me it's just a much richer value that we're bringing to the consumer and it's an exciting one. I think it creates a much more meaningful and
00:16:27
Speaker
almost playful experience for the end users who get to discover brands versus feeling like they're being discovered or being sold a product starts to become this really enjoyable process again of purchasing a product and engaging with a brand and not so almost predatory, which I think we slipped into for a little bit.
00:16:46
Speaker
Oh, I love that like predatory. You're totally right. Because for a while we were just like, we were the fish in the barrel. But now we're being enticed and delighted and surprised. And that's such a, it's an energetic ship. Do you know Vacation Inc? Did Red Handler do it? No, I wish we had done.
00:17:06
Speaker
I love that as an example of. You have an honorary title with the business. No, I don't, but I do have, I saved. Have you bought any other sunscreen? I have, I have in my, when I signed up for the, you get the sort of title with the business Manatee Missus, which I'm very proud of. Manatee, I love that.
00:17:28
Speaker
All of the text messages I get from them are addressed to the manatee masseuse and they all sound like missives from the C-suite at the business. It's brilliant. I never opted out for years now because I just get such a kick out of getting
00:17:46
Speaker
their comms and again, like great example. They could have just given us 15% off of a next sunscreen purchase, but instead it was like this form of entertainment and experience every time I engage with them. And that is the difference between, you know, what I would consider like the table stakes brands showing up and what it means to actually elevate that into a space of entertainment and storytelling and experience.
00:18:16
Speaker
Totally. Yeah. I saved like their sunscreens for anyone who hasn't bought them. They come when you get the package. It's like an old like 1985 pharmacy receipt and like a little paper bag. But also I was emailing with their PR team about something maybe related to content people.
00:18:33
Speaker
And I think that their internal teams all have fake bylaws, fake email signatures. Like it's old school names. It's like Doris, like head of account. And I'm like, I don't think her name's Doris, but they like are so committed to the character, which brings me to something I really want to talk to you about, which is you wrote such an interesting article on Medium. I will link it in the show notes about how brand is a bit like method acting. And you talked about Daniel Day-Lewis. Could you do for folks? I haven't checked that out there a little bit about that.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yes, of
Brand Consistency and Challenges
00:19:04
Speaker
course. So my undying loyalty to Daniel Day-Lewis has been this conversation, but the truth is what he does when he makes movies is super inspiring to me as a brand builder. Most people are probably relatively familiar with this concept of method acting, but essentially it's a tool where an actor really embodies their character completely. A great example of this with Daniel Day-Lewis is my
00:19:33
Speaker
my left foot when he was filming this, he spent the entirety of the filming in a wheelchair so that he could really embody the experiences of his character as fully as possible. He even required to have his meals be spoon-fed to him so that he could really understand more completely as much as he could what it was like for Christy Brown, who was the character he was playing,
00:19:55
Speaker
to live with cerebral palsy. He made just a complete physical commitment to experiencing life as Brown had to the degree it was possible, of course. And his commitment to his role in that transformation was just absolute. There was no break in character during the film, no sort of perfunctory gestures. What that enables for us as viewers is a completely immersive experience. It really transported us to another world.
00:20:23
Speaker
And as brand builders, we have the same duty to our audiences. Every single touchpoint that your end user engages in from how they interact with your customer service to even those big high value campaigns to your membership enrollment forms should all really underscore the mission upon which you built your brand. And customers should be able to experience that very unique and
00:20:49
Speaker
brand value in every interaction and never feel like they've lost the thread or worse, feel like they're being tricked or betrayed. And I speak a little bit about this in the medium piece, but Liquid Death does this incredibly well. Their fans are super stan. They sold something like $3 million in just t-shirts and hoodies last year. And I've just created incredible branded content across their ecosystem.
00:21:16
Speaker
Just a couple of examples, they hired a witch to infuse its water with demons for Halloween.
00:21:22
Speaker
I know I love that one. They offered free postage labels so customers can mail plastic bottles to Pepsi's and Coke's offices. They just truly get the power of brand to deliver value beyond product. They built this super powerful community of loyalists, not because of canned water, but because they entertain them through consistently on-brand experiences that never break character.
00:21:47
Speaker
The other example of when this doesn't work that we have chatted about is Kite Baby. So if you followed any of the press lately around this particular business, they recently landed in some pretty hot water because they fired an employee who had asked to work remotely when her baby was admitted into the NICU. This was all technically legal, but it was a huge contradiction to the brand's mission and a lot of the behaviors that they had embodied in their brand.
00:22:17
Speaker
It was a lot of TikToks about their family first work culture, a dedication to a team, as a diverse group of parents on the website.
00:22:26
Speaker
and probably even more implicating that they were doing business in a category marketing to parent. And they broke character. The magic vanished in the middle of the movie, and it really hurt the business. There was a lot of social media backlash from customers, a lot of bad press, and a very difficult reputational ding to recover from. And really what this means to me is that brands should really infiltrate everything. It should infiltrate your internal comms and your business practices.
00:22:56
Speaker
Because that veil between how you operate and the story you tell the world is much more thin than a lot of people realize. And maintaining that commitment to character and really embodying it can't just be gesture outwardly in the hopes of converting customers. It really has to be how you embody and behave both internally and externally.
00:23:20
Speaker
Gosh, I really, I love the article. Anyone listening should go read it. It's funny. Like you talking to me, even just those things you're talking about with liquid death is building up such brand affinity for me. I've never bought it, but I'm like, let me go buy one this week and go on their website. But when you talk about Kite Baby, I feel like so stressed out.
00:23:39
Speaker
And like, it feels like real, right? Like you've built a relationship with this brand almost as though they were a friend or someone that you've welcomed into your life. And when we talk about this idea of the potential for a brand to be intrusive,
00:23:55
Speaker
you have to honor that relationship and that headspace and that time and that attention that you're asking for. And I think the stakes are much higher than they ever have been in terms of betraying that trust and that relationship that gets established. So I think it's even more critical that when we think about brand, and again, going back to Red Antlers sort of perspective of brand as verb and experience, not just
00:24:21
Speaker
you know, system, it really becomes even more critical when we think about that ecosystem of creative and how it needs to really be value centric and consumer centric in spirit. So that what we're delivering is meaningful and thoughtful and on brand and not just focused on a specific isolated KPI, which again is super critical. And we make sure we marry both of those sides of the house, but it can't just be
00:24:50
Speaker
the old way of thinking, which is build a brand and convert customers. It's stand up a brand and breathe life into it and innervate it in a way that is meaningful to your end users. My friend Kelly is a CMO who does a lot of brand work. And like one thing I feel like she's expressed to me that I feel like you are
00:25:11
Speaker
saying the same thing is like brand is not I think there's this idea that brand is something you paint on top at the end, right? Everything out. And you're saying you're like, no brand is everything brand should be in your HR and employee policy that should be in your mission and value statement. It's the red thread that's through everything. It's not just the nice to have at the end when you can afford a nicer logo for broccoli. Exactly.
00:25:37
Speaker
No, it really resonates so much. I wanted to ask what are a few common mistakes that you see companies making when it comes to their brand?
Authenticity and Mission Alignment
00:25:46
Speaker
I would guess after this that one thing might be they don't embody it or it's an afterthought as opposed to a through line.
00:25:55
Speaker
What else? Where else do you think people make missteps when it comes to brands? I think you teed it up so beautifully when you talk about that red thread, because I think one of the biggest mistakes a company can make is not showing up in ways that are authentic and sustainable to that foundational mission or ethos of the founders. So no matter what scale of growth the business is in, this matters. You have to know who you are and what purpose you serve to know how to show up authentically. And you really have to do the work
00:26:25
Speaker
of codifying that. Every business should be able to identify their mission, their value system, what they stand for. I actually just listened to your interview with Kelly Corney, which I loved. She mentions the three P's of purpose. Yeah. Sorry, the three P's of purpose, position, and personality. And I think not landing that first P of purpose makes it nearly impossible to land all of them.
00:26:48
Speaker
And I think building brands needs to be iterative and it needs to be really building on top of the foundation that you've laid. And if you don't have that foundation and it's hard to come back to that North Star that you've established.
00:27:04
Speaker
as a purpose of the business and that foundational ethos of the business, you're going to start showing up in ways that are reactive versus responsive. You're going to chase that quick win a little bit more, I guess,
00:27:20
Speaker
intuitively to some degree versus really ensuring that you're gut checking if it's the right thread to pull or the right activation to pursue to make sure that it really aligns with that foundation of the business. And without that North Star, it's very easy for brands to get lost and much harder for them to embody that character that we talk about when we think of method acting as a way for brands to think about never breaking character.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah. I really, I like the way you frame that a lot because I think sometimes with brand and people talk about the importance of consistency, one could misconstrue that to mean we always use blue number 7859G and add up our consistency, but actually that's maybe boring. And in certain contexts, your brand imagery needs to evolve and be appropriate to that context it's in, but the values and the ideas behind it need to be consistent. And it's just, I think when people talk about authenticity,
00:28:16
Speaker
And I feel like I'm babbling a little bit, but what you're expressing is like the foundation of who you are. And then as long as you're showing up appropriately in many different contexts, you're authentic. And I think that's so helpful. So you, you feel like often brands are, their misstep is that they haven't necessarily defined their values and their purpose and their why, and then it feel disjointed or inauthentic when you're engaging with them.
00:28:45
Speaker
Like, that's so interesting. And then, OK, so I wanted to ask you, if you were bootstrapping a company and say you only have four to five K to spend on developing a brand, at least for now, how would you use that money? And what would you do?
Community Building Strategies
00:29:01
Speaker
I think one of the most critical things in the early stages of a business is building community. And to be honest, I don't think that ever really deprioritizes. I think building communities for brands
00:29:13
Speaker
has become more important than ever. But in those early days, especially with limited dollars, I think beginning to talk and engage with your community. This could be through organic social platforms that get a lot of reach like TikTok. It could be doing in real life activations at a local level. It could be standing up a really meaningful CRM framework. But community is going to be more and more important than ever.
00:29:39
Speaker
So collecting first party data whenever and wherever possible, building dialogue with your customers, getting those early adopters to convert to brand evangelists, all of that becomes super critical and just
00:29:53
Speaker
to pause a little bit on first party data with privacy changes, constantly expanding and evolving and changing, and third party cookies going away, having brands establish the ability to speak to their consumers and even know their consumers. When you're doing work or you're building a brand with a diverse set of retailers, you really lose those insights and engagement opportunities with your customers because
00:30:21
Speaker
All of that data tends to be in a bit of a black box. So anything you can do to get that email address, get that SMS, start building customer profiles, understand how they're behaving, what their needs are, survey them.
00:30:35
Speaker
Throw a type form in an email and really start to ask questions and engage with them. I think that becomes invaluable in the earliest stages of a business because as you grow, now have an expanding group of customers in your funnel to engage with, to ask questions, to understand what their needs are, how the brand can deliver on those needs.
00:30:59
Speaker
And if you do it right and you do it thoughtfully, those folks are going to start bringing other people into your brand world. And it becomes this very critical component of dialogue and data and insights as you scale that I would recommend establishing from the jump. I think that's such good advice. One thing I've been thinking about a little bit lately is
00:31:25
Speaker
how actually not necessarily lowest hanging fruit but how actually building something for me has been more so than I expected just focusing on like the tiny things in front of me and like nurturing expanding nurturing expanding as opposed to some
00:31:45
Speaker
I don't know, big idea that's going to get 50 customers and that's a little farther away. I'm not even articulating it. It's an energy. I need to like think about this. I feel like I want to write about it or something, but what you're saying, you're like, talk to the customers you've got, nurture them, build that community, get their info. And it's also reminding me too of Jessica is an amazing copywriter and she comes at.
00:32:06
Speaker
island and she is always evangelizing about getting the customers language and putting their language into your copy and I find it so powerful. I love that. You brought up Vacation Inc. earlier. I think this is a great example of something really interesting that they did when it comes to establishing community and using first party data. So when they first launched
00:32:30
Speaker
You know they were basically building a D to C CPG brand from scratch and that can be very expensive very challenging and can often involve a lot of paid ads then. But what they did when they launched was they enticed people to sign up for their marketing emails.
00:32:49
Speaker
again, by offering them that fictitious role in the company. They got their own business card. They had crazy titles like Shrimp Cocktail Designer, Martini Stained Bathrobe Authority. I was manatee masseuse, but
00:33:05
Speaker
I think it was about maybe over two or three days, 12,000 people signed up for the jobs, which gave the brand access to their email, their phone number, SMS update. And again, they mixed this great value beyond product with the product. So their comms were really rich. So like it was an announcement of when the office Christmas party was scheduled. So something that would be really just truly a form of experience.
00:33:33
Speaker
and entertainment. And it was all calibrated for organic discovery. So they had thousands of digital business cards embossed with these fake honorary titles. And people were sharing them across Twitter and Instagram. People were updating their LinkedIn profiles with their new roles. And it just became this super organic viral campaign that both raised awareness of the sunscreen without spending a penny on paid advertising. And in the long term,
00:34:02
Speaker
The company now had all of these thousands of consumers in the funnel with whom they now had a direct line of communication. So again, early doors, it doesn't have to be a super expensive experience. But if you can find a way to start bringing people into your brand world through really meaningful, organic, and thoughtful brand storytelling, you're really getting off on a very strong foot.
00:34:31
Speaker
I love, I think it's such a good event. Thank you. All right. So for my final question, that Gary does ghost writing.
Supernatural Fascinations
00:34:40
Speaker
Have you ever seen a ghost Maggie? I'm obsessed with this question. The sad answer is no, but I thought something big was coming.
00:34:51
Speaker
All right, this will be good. I desperately want to. And I relish ghost stories. This topic is actually one of my favorite things to discuss, especially over drinks, because there are some absolutely wild stories out there. And nothing makes me feel simultaneously like a child and a helpless adult than the thought of something pretty natural happening. And every time I move into a new place, I keep hoping it's haunted. But
00:35:16
Speaker
That hasn't happened yet. So if anyone is listening, I am open to haunting. But yeah, I just I love the idea of it. I'm still pulling out that it will happen. But it's truly one of my favorite things to hear about from other people's experiences. Have you? I've never seen one, but I have had. OK, so now I need to figure out what to do with this question because I can't always reciprocate with the same story because people will be like, we know, we know.
00:35:45
Speaker
Um, but I did, uh, when I, once I was in college and, um, my boyfriend at the Times house with three roommates who were all friends with, they had a lot, a lot of them had been, had like funny experiences, like doors locking and stuff. And I was always like smoking a lot of weed, but then I had this really weird thing happen where I was at the kitchen sink.
00:36:10
Speaker
I was doing dishes. And from the front door, I heard what I just presumed was one of the roommates open the door, close, unlock, come in the door, walk down the hallway, come into the kitchen and put a hand on my back shoulder. And I turned around to be like, hey, nobody was there. And I looked out the window over the sink. And all three of the folks who lived in the house were standing in the yard top of each other.
00:36:35
Speaker
Oh my god. That is so good. Oh, that's a good one. I didn't see it. I just heard the noises and felt a hand on my shoulder. But now I want you to have this experience. I do. And at the same time, I'm horrified at the bottom. Oh my gosh. But yeah, I was talking about this with Emily, as I mentioned on a call earlier, and she was like,
00:36:58
Speaker
You know how people have open for work on their LinkedIn profile? I feel like an open for haunting. You can just broadcast the world that you're ready. Now I'm saying this, I feel like I should take it all back because I'm going to invite something terrifying into my life.
00:37:14
Speaker
Sadly, not yet, but you will be the first person I tell. You have to tell me if you do get experiences only. You're going to start people will listen and start sending you listings to haunted property or haunted Airbnb something. I welcome it. Please do. Maggie, this was so amazing and fun. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anything I didn't ask that you wished I had or that you would have wanted to say or advise folks around? You know, I,
00:37:41
Speaker
I think the big thing I just encourage brand builders and people in this world of ours to do is to not
00:37:52
Speaker
be so precious about following a prescribed cookie cutter way of bringing a brand into the world. Think of it as a really beautiful opportunity to storytell and engage and create these cinematic experiences and really push the boundaries of what we consider these tactics and best practices. I think there's so much more that we can do to have fun and entertain and create experiences that matter to people.
00:38:18
Speaker
So yeah, just have fun with it and make something special. All right. Thank you so much Maggie. Yeah, thank you.
00:38:32
Speaker
Hey content people, do you mind if I call you that? If you like the show, there are a few ways you can stay in touch and support us. The first is you could subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. The second is you could leave a five star rating and a review.
00:38:49
Speaker
Those make a really big impact. I know they're a pain and they take a little bit of time, but if you're feeling generous and you've been listening to the show, I'd appreciate it so much. And the third is you could sign up for the Content People newsletter. The link is in the show notes. We share news about the show and episodes. And I also write a lot about the intersection between
00:39:07
Speaker
work and creativity, which is at the heart of so many of these content people conversations. We also love feedback. If you want to request a guest or a topic, pitch yourself to be on the show, advertise with us, learn more about Medberry social media, or otherwise just be in touch, shoot me an email. I would love to hear from you. It's Meredith at medberryagency.com. That's M-E-D-B-U-R-Y agency.com. I will throw that in the show notes too. All right, until next time.