Camden Bernatz (00:00:01) - Welcome to the introductory, first initial episode of this new podcast endeavor called Brands and Campaigns. The stories and people behind clever marketing strategies. I'm Camden Bernatz. I work at EKR, the agency that is powering this podcast, as a creative director and brand strategist and I have here with me Adam Stoker. You want to talk about yourself for a minute?
Adam Stoker (00:00:24) - Yeah, thanks Camden. I'm Adam Stoker. I'm the President and CEO of two advertising agencies. One is called Relic, the other is called EKR, which you know, might sound familiar after your introduction. I'm really excited to be here to talk about one of my absolute favorite topics, brands and campaign strategy.
Camden Bernatz (00:00:43) - Yeah, me too. To give a little background to the listeners of how we got here and the name itself, Brands and Campaigns is kind of open ended. It's not too specific because we want to intentionally keep it open ended as far as the focus on branding campaigns. Lots of brands and lots of campaigns do different things that are things we can learn from those of us who are in the industry whether you're on an agency side that is working on brands and campaigns for a client or you're in-house working for a brand that you own or are employed by.
The thought that came to my mind that helped me kind of solidify the direction of this podcast when we were planning it is, have you ever looked around and like seen like a billboard or a Super Bowl commercial or any form of advertising or maybe a rebrand? And there's plenty of people who talk about what they think about it. But have you ever wondered, like, how did it get there?
Adam Stoker (00:01:37) - Yes. And so, it's funny, it's actually what led me to get into advertising because I remember I drove my parents crazy. I would sit in the living room, we'd be watching, like, we used to watch America's Funniest Home Videos and stuff like that together. During the commercials, I would be like, “What made them think that was a good idea? Dad, help me understand,” and he's like, “Man, you ought to consider going into advertising,” and I was, oh, ha ha. You know, I didn't think anything of it.
Then when I got into college I first tried Print Journalism and I was like, this is not it. Then I tried Public Relations and PR theory for me was just like a little, it was an attempt at depth that I didn't really want to chase, I guess. And then I thought, well, my dad always said that I ought to try advertising. So I took an Intro to Advertising class and the rest is history.
Camden Bernatz (00:02:28) - That's the origin story. Nice. Yeah, obviously I’m very much the same way and especially not having some time under my belt helping work on brands and campaigns, it's not as straightforward as some might think. Right? There's a different approval process sometimes from red tape, depending on the organization and the size of it. There's trying to meld together the subjective and the objective, that the strategy needs to be accomplished and then the opinions on the best way to do that.
And so I think that for me and this is someone who obviously I work in the industry, but to me, it's also entertaining. I want to get to some stories of talking to people around the advertising and branding world about that perspective and how they came to make different decisions to produce the work because it's also entertaining. It's kind of like a reality TV show, behind the scenes, kind of stuff, a sneak peek. So hopefully those listening to the podcast will be those who are in the industry, of course, who can learn tips and tricks. But even beyond that, it's just interesting to see now when you're driving down the street and you see that billboard, you see that commercial come across YouTube or TV, you can have some insight on how it got to be where it's at and what went into it.
Adam Stoker (00:03:35) - Yeah, Camden, you're an interesting case study, I guess. And I really enjoy your story. So I hope you don't mind me sharing your story a little bit from an outsider's perspective.
Camden Bernatz (00:03:42) - Sure. We’ll see how it goes.
Adam Stoker (00:03:44) - You were just a very bad person, you know, and no, just, but your story is fascinating to me because I remember I met you when we did an offside activity, you were doing some marketing for a different company. It was like a hatchet throwing company or an ax throwing company. And we were doing a teambuilding exercise there. And you sent me an email and you said, hey, I see you don't have SEO in house, which by the way, this was the best approach from a potential employee that I've ever had. You said, here's why you should have SEO in house. Here's how I can deliver on that for you. And here's the value I can add to you and your organization. I went to my business partners and I'm like, we got to find a spot for this guy. I mean, he clearly understands what we're trying to do and has demonstrated already how he would add value to our business, right?
And so when you came in as an SEO specialist, it was fascinating to watch your vision and interest and curiosity kind of broaden over time to the point where it's like this guy is completely wasted being siloed in an SEO role. So then it kind of evolved into you were like an apprentice kind of to the person that was leading our brand strategy stuff and then ultimately ended up taking that over and now have evolved even more into a creative director role.
So I really, I think your story is really interesting because your curiosity about the campaigns that you see out there has actually translated into completely expanding your role in our organization.
Camden Bernatz (00:05:19) - Yeah. Well, I appreciate those are some kind words and I've been grateful for the opportunities I've been given. But yeah, I mean, I think there are some advertising nerds like me out there. I think there's some here in the agency. I'm hoping there are, that's what we're making this podcast for. But when I say advertising nerds because I really do like enjoy it. Like I don't just want to clock out at the end of the day and then I have to think about it till I come back the next day. I lay in bed thinking about ads and stuff sometimes or going on YouTube to go find things I saw before and watch them again and things like that. So it's intriguing to me.
So maybe we should lay out the kind of the format of the podcast going forward, right? So, like I said before, we want to have insights from the people who are involved in the process and not just here in our agency, not just me and you, but our little tagline we've given to the podcast is the people and stories behind different clever marketing moves, whether that's a rebrand or an ad or facing a PR situation or whatever it might be. So we're going to try to have people on from different, whether they're part of the brands themselves or maybe from agencies that have worked with brands to get their insights on things that are happening in the current marketing world.
When I say current, the last few years, maybe like it doesn't have to be necessarily what happened last week, but to get their stories and really let them talk about what went into it because I'm sure people are all used to hearing about the results of things or people's reactions if they like that Super Bowl ad or not. And Super Bowl ads are kind of maybe a little bit bigger than some of the brands we're going to start out with. We'll hopefully get there. But the stories that help give perspective so people can learn from that and also be entertained by that. So each episode will start with that or not, each episode, I guess each series of episodes will start with that. Followed up by a secondary episode that comes after that is a reaction to that and that one will be just our team members, the guests won't be there with us to talk about what we learn from that or what takes ways. Any kind of follow up thoughts from that experience because we don't want to be talking too much when they're with us. We want them to have the floor and then we can react to it.
And so I as the main host, and again, my name is Camden Bernatz. You'll hear from me a lot going forward. I'll be in each episode, but we'll have people like Adam here with us and my agency to help cycle through as guest hosts to give different perspective in their different roles, whether it's CEO and President like Adam or it's another person on the creative team, someone who runs digital marketing, PR, whatever it might be, we’ll have a different rotation of perspectives that join me to react to those things.
Adam Stoker (00:07:49) - Great. And actually, do you mind if as kind of an intro, we also make sure that from the beginning, we are helping the audience understand the difference between brands and campaigns because so many clients that we talk to and potential clients that we talk to people will come in and either say, I need a new brand and they really want a campaign or they say I need a new campaign and what they really need is a brand strategy project. So what do you think about outlining that for everybody to kick off the show?
Camden Bernatz (00:08:18) - Sure. Well, what do you think? You start with that? Yeah.
Adam Stoker (00:08:21) - Well, at one point in time did write a book on branding. It was more centered for the tourism industry, but I think the premise of the book is definitely relevant here and it's not my premise. I actually built the book around a quote that I heard from a really amazing legacy advertising icon in the state of Utah. His name is Tom Love and I listened to Tom speak at my first Utah Tourism Conference many years ago. In his presentation, he said your brand is the sum of all the touch points your organization has with the outside world.
And as I thought about that concept, it really stuck with me because so many people think that a brand is a logo or that it's their website or whatever. And in fact, your brand is the sum of all the different things that includes your logo and your website, but also could include the phone call that they have with the customer service agent or it includes the interaction that they have with an employee at the front desk or whatever it is. There's so many different touch points. How do you make sure that you are controlling the touch points that you have control over? Because the word of mouth conversation that happens after the fact, that's a touch point you can't control. But I believe that by controlling the touch points that you have the ability to influence or control, you can actually make sure that the ones you can't control are more positive.
So a brand is where you should be examining what are all of those touch points your organization has with the outside world and then making sure that the sum of those is what you want people to feel or interpret as your brand.
Camden Bernatz (00:10:04) - Yeah, the most easy to look at part of a brand is the visual identity, right? The logo, the colors and often people will just kind of refer to that as, oh, they had a rebrand, they changed their logo or something like that, which is part of your brand for sure. But yeah, like you said, it's more than that. So as we dive into some brand stories, whether it's helping extend a brand that maybe had a weak presence or public perception or a rebrand or whatever the aspect might be related to branding, we're going to try to help identify those different touch points and how these people went about addressing those identifying the need to take action and then what led to the action that they took and then as well as just campaigns.
We were talking before about some of the examples of things that we'd like to talk about. Not that we have everyone signed up to come on yet, but we'll work on it. This is a very small moment in time, but something that I'd like to talk about if I can get somebody from Oreo on here or some or the agency they worked with is this was a few years ago back now. But during one of the Super Bowls, if you remember, there was a big blackout at the stadium that is. So like there was a lack of the game happening, right? People were like, what happened? Why isn't the game out? What's going on? And so there was kind of this pause in the middle of like the most televised event of the year.
And so Oreo and I don't know who was involved as far as running their social media accounts, but their Twitter account back when it was Twitter not X. They during the blackout really quickly came together, got a designed image of Oreo being like dipped in the milk and it was kind of dark on the side of the screen, like the light was fading and it said you can still dunk in the dark, which was a perfect time response to when everyone's going to Twitter because they're already following game stuff on Twitter. Right? And then they're also like, what's going on? Why is the game not on trying to get information? And it became a super viral tweet and that it's still a bunch of cookies in the moment. I don't know the exact stats on that. People were eating treats though during the Super Bowl, right? And now they have more time to kill.
So I don't claim to know all that went behind that because that's what I want to know. That's why I want to get on and say what actually was who made the phone call or who connected to who or who had to approve that so that that tweet could go out in that moment. And that was something that was well known and talked about at the time. So one little tiny example but that something that's related to you a brand, not so much a campaign, right? One tweet is not a campaign, but I want to know the story behind that.
Adam Stoker (00:12:26) - Well, no, but you've illustrated a very key link between brands and campaigns and they actually did turn that into a campaign by taking the virality of that then tweet. What do you call it now when you post? An X post? That's not as maybe it is enticing. I don't know, but they leverage that into a lot more opportunity after the fact. So they turned it into a campaign but from specifically the posting that you've illustrated here is if you know who you are as a brand and you have established what you want people to feel about you when they interact with your brand, you will know what to do in those moments when the opportunities come up. Right?
So the Oreo employee, whoever the brilliant person was that was managing those social media channels, they knew because they understood the brand really, really well, they knew what messaging was actually going to resonate and not look like a crazy dumb stupid thing that they did during. Because you see brands do so many tone deaf things in situations where it's like it goes viral for all the wrong reasons. Right? But Oreo clearly understood their brand, they clearly understood who they wanted to be to their audience. So the employee was equipped with what they needed to actually make that a success moment.
Camden Bernatz (00:13:52) - Yeah. And as this also shows the value being tied into current events and what's happening. The Super Bowl is not directly related to cookies at all, but they knew that this is something people are thinking about. We have a place to, we could we could fit in there because it also would have made no sense if something like a vacuum company tweeted during this, that there is no connection. But they're like, hey, people are eating cookies and treats right now. It's a time for us to speak instead of not speak.
And so anyways, this is in the Oreo episode, but yeah, things like that we want to talk about and but yeah, we besides doing our own finding and vetting of different opportunities to get people on, we encourage anybody who wants to tell their story. If you work with a brand or agency and you want to highlight an interesting process or a behind the scenes look to get in touch with us, or you can also submit some ideas of things that you want to know more about. Maybe you've seen a brand rebrand happened or an ad or something that you're curious how it happened, send it our way, we'll do our best to try to get the story behind that and get them on.
In the description box in the episode, there's a form. You can fill out. We'd love to have any suggestions on who we should go after for their behind the scenes, insight and stories.
Adam Stoker (00:15:01) - I've got an idea for a segment on the show. Are you ready?
Camden Bernatz (00:15:04) - Yeah.
Adam Stoker (00:15:04) - So Utah is really interesting. Right? You've got I-15, which basically runs through about 80% of the Utah population, which makes the Utah billboard culture one of the most unique things that you will find in the advertising world. And you get some of the worst billboards you'll ever see and you get some of the best billboard campaigns that you'll ever see. I kind of think Billboard of the Week or something like that would be a super fun addition to the show. What were they thinking? Why did they do it? Whether it's in a good way or a bad way.
Camden Bernatz (00:15:39) - That's a good idea. I love billboards. Like they're, they're an old school form of advertising, but they still have a lot of power and I was actually reading an article recently about them kind of coming outdoors kind of increasing again apparently about as far as a part of marketing spend. But, yeah, that'd be an interesting segment.
Adam Stoker (00:15:56) - Billboards are interesting because in media buying what you actually are taught is you have eight seconds. That's how long you get with a billboard. And so they say seven words or less is what you need in order for someone to actually be able to see and internalize that message. What can you say in seven words or less that's actually going to resonate with somebody? I think that's actually the, do you have a good message or not? A great evaluation of that is can you create a successful billboard that people actually care about? A billboard is a great way to test and see if your messaging is effective.
Camden Bernatz (00:16:34) - That’s true. You have to reduce it down to the core essence of what you're trying to say or the core essence of the brand. Yeah. One other quick example, if we have time for, this is on the brand side of things. I've wondered for a while, I've talked to people about this. The brand target, the department store, right? Well known, at least in the United States, I'm not sure if it's international or not. But well-known brand and I don't think anyone would say that they're like hurting for business as far as I know. I want to know, are they –
Adam Stoker (00:17:04) - Well, in the last, Last few months, they definitely had some hits to their brand when you said that I couldn't tell if you were kidding.
Camden Bernatz (00:17:11) - No, that's a good point. No, you remember. I guess they're not going out of business. I guess.
Adam Stoker (00:17:15) - They'll be all right. They will recover.
Camden Bernatz (00:17:16) - But they had some PR situations. But anyways, as far as the brand itself, I try to imagine what it was like, I don't know who came up with that, maybe it was just the founder and he did it, did it themselves. But if I was trying to pitch to a new company, work on their brand for their department store, and I was like, we're going to call you Target the thing that you shoot at with weapons and your logo is just going to be a big red target. That's your -- I was imagining all the clients meeting that been how I could just imagine the negative feedback I get from that. Like we don't want to be a target, like a target on our back and just a big red target. Like that's not at all inviting your creative, like, but it happened and it seems to have worked for them. I don't think they're trying to change their logo anytime soon. Like it's all about that's a whole nother conversation is like, what actually makes something good or bad, right? I want to know how Target came to be Target and not just like the high level story of like who came up with it, but like, I want to know what happened in the room with the conversations were like, what else got left on the table? And so that's been one that's intrigued me is how a brand like that comes to be.
Adam Stoker (00:18:23) - Well, and that's an interesting case study because they had to be committed in so many different facets of their business. There's two Targets that are actually being built in Utah County right now. One in Spanish Fork, one in Provo and they are waiting until construction is just about done and it looks really good as opposed to looking all destroyed and demolition. Then they put the big red wall up almost like that's the announcement is when it turns red, everybody knows it's going to be a Target. Right? And they haven't even put the logo on yet, but they've committed so much in every aspect of their brand. All their people are wearing the red shirts that work in the store, their signage, everything is so consistent.
So not only did somebody pitch in the boardroom, hey, let's make it a Target but then they actually said we're going to commit to this for the duration of our time as an organization regardless of how weird it might seem that a shooting target is our actual image and logo. I think it also goes to show that with the right creativity, your name and your logo might not matter near as much as your execution and commitment to consistency.
Camden Bernatz (00:19:34) - Exactly. Yeah, fully believe that. You can't try to do too much. You're not going to accomplish everything about the essence of your brand in a logo or even a name, like those are important. You shouldn't just do it willy nilly without thinking about it. But like what touch points, right? Tying back to that, the overall consistent influence of those touch points is what's going to make your brand. And so you can have a place called Target and people want to come shop there.
Adam Stoker (00:20:01) - Can I tell you some of the dangers of that case study?
Camden Bernatz (00:20:03) - Sure.
Adam Stoker (00:20:04) - And I love talking out both sides of my mouth and like illustrating both sides. But the thing that I think is a concern is that you've got these brands like Target, you've got Burger King, McDonald's, like these companies that have just been around forever, some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Let's think about why were they able to get where they got? Right? Number one, timing. They were able to launch when media was very non fragmented, for lack of a better description. So when TV and radio were the only two media and newspaper, I guess, were the only three media by which you could reach people, you could do a blanket nationwide buy. And you know, even if your messaging sucked, you were probably going to be able to capture the audience and build a relationship with them in some way.
But if you look at over time in the early 2000’s, the different digital marketing tactics started to come out, paid search on Google and paid social, next thing you know attention is as fragmented as it's ever been. So trying to build a brand from the ground up today by doing a blanket buy to reach the whole country, you've got to do a nationwide buy on about 1000 different media outlets in order to even capture 50% of the marketplace. It's almost unachievable at this point.
And so the reason I get a little concerned about some of those case studies is they were very consistent, they took what they had and they doubled down on it and they continued to build their brand from there. I'm not confident that following the model they followed in 50 years is going to put a brand that starts today where Target or McDonald’s or Burger King is today. It's one of the reasons that I'm really concerned with the way advertising and marketing are being approached by the majority of people is I feel like we're trying to duplicate the model that got these legacy brands to where they are today. When in reality, the brands that are building their own audiences seem to be winning right now.
That's a shift and I think it's something that we don't have to do the entire episode on this topic today. But it's a shift that I think is going to continue to happen because this idea of continuing to purchase media and have the cost go up and up and up and up and the return on investment and ability to target go down and down and down. At some point there's this break in the process where it's no longer sustainable. I think a lot of brands have actually already hit that breaking point.
Camden Bernatz (00:22:51) - Yeah, you're definitely right that there's not just a best practice period that is always the best practice, right? You have to adapt and change to the landscape and the technology like you mentioned. Even just the ability, even the opportunity to comment on a brand has been expanded. Back in the 1950’s, a coffee shop, barbershop, and your family and friends, you might have a few comments about something you saw, but like you might write down the road and see a billboard and think that's terrible and that would just stay in your mind, right? You didn't have a Reddit thread or Twitter or TikTok to go talk about or get up in arms about some bad brand move, right? And so for better and for worse or to talk positively about it.
And so the level to which we monitor and respond to brands and hold them accountable for things, that's something that also is relatively new in the landscape.
Adam Stoker (00:23:39) - That's one of my favorite things on TikTok right now is that when there's a trend that goes crazy, a brand will attempt to jump on the trend and you look at the comments and it's like get out of here brand. Nobody wants you here brand. And you're right, that ability to interact with a brand for good or bad has changed a lot.
Camden Bernatz (00:23:59) - Yeah. So yeah, I'm looking to learn from others and apply it myself and also just be entertained. I don't know if you mentioned this before but Adam also has a podcast that he hosts of the Destination Marketing Podcast. So you're a lot more experienced at this than I am. Any tips on like building the podcast, anything we should learn from your experience, we can take forward as we launch this one.
Adam Stoker (00:24:22) - Well, what really helped me on the Destination Marketing Podcast was I built my show around asking my target audience questions. And so what happens on that show is I will find people in the industry that I think are doing some of the most innovative or smartest things in the industry regardless of whether I have a relationship with them or not, whether they're our client or not. And I'm asking them what challenges are they facing? And then I'm asking them about the brilliant things that they're doing and why they did it, how they did it? Similar to what you're planning here on this show. And I learned so much by asking them those questions that I actually have a pretty good pulse on what the audience wants.
I think for any show, it's so important that you understand who your audience is, you understand what they actually desire, what do they want? Why did they search for a podcast that's going to talk about marketing? They're probably passionate about marketing. Right? When you say brands and campaigns, then that's probably a couple of words that are very interesting to them. They're probably interested in creativity. Right? So how do you understand what they want? And then how do you deliver what they want in each episode?
One of the things that I found in the destination marketing industry is that the Town Square for Destination Marketing is conferences. They go to conferences all over the country, all over the world and it's where they meet up, it's where they go to dinner and all these things happen. And so one of the things that they have at these conferences is these inspirational speakers that just get up there and they make you feel good. It's like Tony Robbins style, do an incredible job. Then, everybody leaves the conference, they're so excited, they go sit down at their computer and they're like, I'm really excited, but I have no idea where to start. What do I do now, right?
So we try to give a very tactical takeaway in every episode that every destination that's listening can go implement tomorrow. Right? That's proven to be a very helpful way for us to make sure we understand what the audience needs and give them something they can actually use because everybody -- like there's tons of inspiring content out there. How can you give me something that will actually benefit me in my job if I'm listening to it for work? Or if it's not for work, what will benefit me in my home life? Right? Those are probably the two different types of things that people are seeking for podcasts. That's proven to be really effective for us on the Destination Marketing Podcast.
Camden Bernatz (00:26:52) - Great. That's good insight. Yeah, if we can get some listeners and have anything close to the success you've had with your podcast, the Destination Marketing Podcast that is, then yeah, we'll be happy with that over here.
Adam Stoker (00:27:04) - I think you'll far exceed it.
Camden Bernatz (00:27:07) - One episode, one guest at a time, right? And just the little shameless plug for the agency that's powering this EKR agency where I'm working, and Adam is an owner of, I think that we are in a particularly good place to be having a podcast like this because we really pride ourselves on being a strategy first agency, right? Over the last few years we still offer a full range of services, but we really pride ourselves on being strategy first and making sure we understand those brand questions, those touch points. If a client has those brand things in order, we make sure we're fully up to speed on what that brand is so we can react like the Oreo Tweet and be able to know how to respond and how to act for their brand.
If they don't have them in order, but we offer rebrand services. We help them identify what would you need to be, what would make you different in the marketplace? What, what is, should the brand look like? And we do lots of brand pivots, turns, rebrand. We call it lots of different things. But so I'm looking forward to only just to learn because it interests me. But I think I can get better at this as well learning from the perspective of those who are really doing it as well.
Adam Stoker (00:28:11) - Yeah, I mean that's how I've learned in almost anything I've done. It’s just asking questions. I love that you're structuring this around asking why did somebody do this? Why did they do that? Your learning is actually going to be accelerated and I can only say that because that's exactly what happened to me. Right? And so it's going to benefit the listeners, it's going to benefit you. It's going to benefit our organization. You brought up the cookie and timing.
I just think we'd be remiss if we didn't briefly talk about another timing situation that we had that related to cookies in our agency. This is where I'm going to give you some kudos here because we had a cookie company called Dirty Dough come to us. At this point I think it was a year and a half ago or so right around there. They were getting ready to launch a cookie company. They had one location and they said they wanted to target women and almost everything about their brand was masculine.
So the thing that we were able to say is listen, first, we need to look at your brand, we need to reimagine it from the ground up. You did a little bit of a touch points analysis of what are the different touch points and how can we clean these up and make sure they're speaking to the right audience. You went through that whole process, of course, with your team, and then at the end of the process, writers were wrapping up the brand, you've got messaging figured out and we know kind of this brand is this but is not this, like it was very -- we had a clear picture. Right?
Then all of a sudden I open up LinkedIn one day and I see that the founder of the organization, his name's Bennett Maxwell, that he had posted that Crumbl had sued Dirty Dough. And it was like, I don't know if it could have been better timing and all the people that were commenting on his LinkedIn post, they just kept saying, I can't believe this is happening. We're behind you. We support Dirty Dough. What we were able to recognize as an organization in that moment is that we did have a moment in time similar to the moment that the Oreo employee had.
I remember calling Bennett and saying, you're ready to do something a little crazy? You want to poke the bear? He said, let's do it. Let's do something crazy. To his credit, I think that was a really gutsy move on his part. Then you were able to lead the team putting together a pretty incredible campaign for Dirty Dough and launched the Utah Cookie Wars. Would you mind briefly just kind of talking about that process?
Camden Bernatz (00:30:44) - Yeah, that was fun. I mean, as much fun as your client getting sued can be. There was obviously some built in stress and we had to make sure with their legal team and stuff that we were keeping everything in check and not saying things we shouldn't say. But yeah, because it was a great timing in the sense that we had worked on establishing that voice and tone, that brand personality, not just what do we say as a brand, but how do we say it? How do we come across? And so it was a great time to put it into action and okay, someone's suing us and they felt confident in their ability to, to fight that lawsuit. So that's why they were okay, kind of poking the bear like you said.
And so we said, okay, how do you respond to that? Other brands either who had a different personality or who didn't understand what they would have, what their personality was might have kind of froze and not know what to do and played it safe. But we were a little bit cheeky. We were a little bit irreverent. We were a little bit playful. That was the brand by we, I mean Dirty Dough. So we were able to kind of poke fun a little bit at, Crumbl was kind of the big mean bully who was trying to come after us because like because our cookies were better or because they just wanted to dominate the cookie world and things like that.
So we had some billboards on I-15. Like you mentioned the Utah billboard scene is crazy. So we wanted to make sure we took advantage of that. Some social media stuff, some different video content and whatnot. So yeah, I think the Wall Street Journal featured the campaign not just our work only but like it was the lawsuit. But we got some of our billboards showing up there. That was nice.
Adam Stoker (00:32:17) - Yeah, I think the messaging too was probably the piece that really made all the difference because there was this moment in time and then you and your team were able to put together this messaging campaign. I remember one of my favorite billboards was, “Can't hurt our fillings,” F-I-L-L-I-N-G-S. and that one was so good. And then also, “Cookies so good were being sued.” was another great one.
Camden Bernatz (00:32:41) - It was like censored, like blurred out. You couldn't see the cookie because it was like it was being sued.
Adam Stoker (00:32:46) - What were some of the other ones?
Camden Bernatz (00:32:48) - Oh, let's see. I'm trying to remember the ones we pitched versus the ones that all made the billboards.
Adam Stoker (00:32:54) - We pitched some wild ones.
Camden Bernatz (00:32:54) - Yeah, yeah. I think that we've mentioned like again I play on like the court case type thing we talked about like, you be the judge or no, “Let your taste buds be the judge.” That was one of them. I think I'm forgetting the other one. But yeah, we did some stuff like that and it was also something that we had to keep monitoring. Right? You could make sure if the tide shifts and all of a sudden public opinion is that Dirty Dough is now like not taking it seriously or actually Crumbl’s in the right. And we want to make sure we were being current and careful with that.
There was some people, obviously they were pro Crumbl and pro lawsuit and we tried to not engage that much. But it was interesting to see that Crumbl and partially, I think because they were just so big and powerful they might not have thought it was worth it, but they didn't really respond to us. I mean, they continued the lawsuit but they weren't trying to clap back or anything. They just kind of put their heads down and kept going with it. I don't know.
Adam Stoker (00:33:51) - Well, the thing that blew my mind was that with public opinion going the way it was, Crumbl’s, billboards were all and they put up billboards, right as we put our billboards up. But their billboards were all centered around this is how big we are. We sell this many million cookies per week or we have this many franchises. The thing that I thought was a little bit tone deaf about that campaign that –
Camden Bernatz (00:34:14) - They're not going to have a mom now and we can't get Crumbl on if we talk about it.
Adam Stoker (00:34:17) - You know what? I'd love to actually –
Camden Bernatz (00:34:20) - I wanna hear what Crumbl was thinking
Adam Stoker (00:34:21) - Could we get them on to hear their side of the story. That would be incredible
Camden Bernatz (00:34:23) - That would be awesome
Adam Stoker (00:34:25) - Because knowing that everybody was loving the underdog story of Dirty Dough to then go put the billboards up that say, “We have more stores than anybody. We're bigger than anybody. We sell more cookies than anybody.” It was just so contrary to what the public was clearly hungry for. I can't say because Crumbl wasn't our client. So I can't say what I think the right answer would have been, but I know it wasn't hey, yes, this is Goliath suing David in case any of you were wondering.
I thought that was a really interesting process to go through and they came to us with 25 franchises pre sold, something like that. I'm not sure if that's the exact number. But by the time we ended our relationship with them, it was over 300 franchises that they had sold. A large part of that I would attribute to, of course, Crumbl suing Dirty Dough. I mean, that was the tipping point. But then our ability because of the work that we had done to understand the brand and the brand personality, that then our team was equipped to in 48 hours to build a complete campaign including these really cheeky and interesting billboards and digital ads that had such an impact on public opinion. One of the most fun situations and campaigns I've ever been involved in.
Camden Bernatz (00:35:47) - Yeah, for sure. And taking risks, right? Like not every single marketing movie you do has to be that level of risk taking whatever you want to call it. But like just, but the better that you know yourself as a brand, the more you can take calculated risks and standing out and not just throwing something at the wall and seeing what sticks. But being like this is a risk that actually is on brand for us to do that. You see that with like Liquid Death in the water space. Like they pretty much are just exist because of a brand. Like the water itself is water. It's nothing special about like they don't claim to have some special ingredients or properties. It's just water and this really unique brand. They're another good example of one that has done that well. But yeah, good insight.
Well, thank you very much for being on the show today, Adam. I'm sure we'll hear from you again soon as we rotate through different guests that join me. For those who want to learn more about you or your podcast or anything you're up to, how can they get in touch with you or your media?
Adam Stoker (00:36:47) - Yeah, so LinkedIn is where I'm the most active. So just Adam Stoker on LinkedIn. You can check out the Destination Marketing Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to reach me directly, it's adam@ekragency.com.
Camden Bernatz (00:37:01) - Great. Thank you very much for being on.
Adam Stoker (00:37:02) - Thanks Camden.
Camden Bernatz (00:37:04) - Thank you for listening to this episode. We encourage you to like and subscribe and stay with us so you can get notified about new episodes and new guests we have on and we're working on having some great stuff for you to come. See you next time.
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