Camden Bernatz (00:00:00) - Welcome to Brands and Campaigns, the stories and people behind clever marketing moves powered by EKR. I'm your host, Camden Bernatz, creative director and head of brand strategy at EKR. So after a great conversation with Mike Nuzzo about the viral Oreo tweet during the Super Bowl, I wanted to think about who we should have on to from the agency from EKR to kind of react to this discuss, takeaways, insights immediately thought of Jacqueline Crane who is the director of EKR, but also has a strong background in public relations and has been very involved with EKR clients when it comes to PR, social media management. And so this experience, although it was many years ago is definitely right up her alley. And so Jacqueline Crane, thanks for joining us on the podcast today.
Jacqueline Crane (00:00:50) - Thanks Camden. Happy to be here.
Camden Bernatz (00:00:51) - Tell us a little about yourself and how you got to where you're at in your career. Give us a brief overview. So the listeners know who we're hearing from today.
Jacqueline Crane (00:00:59) - Yeah, happy to do that. I got my undergraduate degree from BYU in public relations. I got a minor in business. My passion, I guess I thought was going to be marketing and kind of started to go in that direction and grades weren't good. I mean, that's kind of how life turns out sometimes. Right? So I pivoted back to communications and actually really, really happy with my degree and public relations is definitely something I have a huge passion for. So I'm happy I did that. After my undergraduate degree, I went on to do an MBA and tried to balance the PR knowledge with, again, the marketing and business and all of the things that go into making something successful.
So, that's when I started working for an agency called Relic and Relic ended up acquiring EKR and that's how I ended up here. So I ended up working my way through PR and content, being a specialist and working my way up to being the director of EKR, but really have learned a lot and have enjoyed every step of the way.
Camden Bernatz (00:02:05) - Awesome. Yeah, we've been very benefited by having you here. So thinking about this experience that we talked with Mike about with this Oreo Tweet that happened, it was years ago. Not like not like the earliest days of social media, but we talked with Mike a little bit about how brands hadn't really grown to be as prominent or as what's the word I guess to have as much of a social media strategy as they do today. It was still kind of the Wild West as far as like, well, I'm not a person, I'm a brand. How do you represent yourself on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, the other things that are around then?
And so I know a lot of the work that we do at our agency for clients on social media. If we try to do some content calendars and we'll plan ahead and we'll prepare and curate nice posts and things like that and that's great. This is an example of being very in the moment and responding in real time to something, it wasn't part of a content calendar. Like when you heard that story and him talk about how they had kind of like a little war room, any initial like thoughts about that, any reaction? Does that like excite you? Does that make you freak out? Like what is, what do you think that would have been like in that room?
Jacqueline Crane (00:03:15) - Well, Camden, and my team know this pretty well, but my personality is very type-A, very organized and one of the immediate thoughts I had, which we did touch a little bit on in the last episode was you have to have a plan of some sort. And obviously, you're talking about not a content calendar plan per se, not “this is what we're going to say if this happens,” but a plan in place or a personality, a brand, a style guide plan, so-to-speak. I know in communications this is often related to your crisis communications plan or the what-if plan. So it's not as specific as that, whereas if this happens, we'll do this.
But I like the idea where I often ponder if big brands like this have enough of a plan or enough of an outline of who they are and how they talk and how they are as a brand on different platforms via social media or news or whatever the case may be, whatever tactic that they know what they're going to say in any situation. And so I like the war room idea and I love being strategic and creative and fun like that. But I think there's definitely a framework or a structure that we put up the walls around and we add our decoration to because we already know what those bare bones are.
Camden Bernatz (00:04:45) - Yeah, but it's like that classic expression of, well, now I'm actually forgetting the expression. What's the line about like preparation? Like preparation is perspiration -- I can't remember basically scratch that. Maybe just kidding. Don't scratch it.
Jacqueline Crane (00:05:02) - This is like, I have no idea. I have no idea what that thing is.
Camden Bernatz (00:05:07) - Yeah, never mind you got to show my awkwardness, don't cut that out. But basically, they were prepared to react if that makes sense. Like they didn't know exactly. Oh, there's going to be a blackout and people are going to be talking about it and we they didn't have the design ready to go and what not. But they had, people said we're going to be ready to respond in real-time to whatever does happen during this game and whatever the conversation does happen during the social commentary and things like that and they knew they were going to be saying some things. Now they kind of had an opportunity that jumped out that they took advantage of, but they were in a place to be prepared for the unexpected if that makes sense. And so that's what I was trying to say. But yeah.
Jacqueline Crane (00:05:42) - And you think about different situations, even from a business perspective you can plan for various things like they knew they were going into sports, they knew they were going into a Super Bowl, they knew that they were on social media. Like, there are various factors of the communication plan or even the conversation that they knew enough to kind of plan or prepare or even have some brainstormed ideas ready. The same goes for business if you're going into an acquisition or if you're going into a lawsuit, which we've now experienced both of those at our agency and they've been fun, you kind of have an idea of what may happen and so you can start preparing ahead of time, which I think is also key there too.
Camden Bernatz (00:06:23) - Yeah. Yeah. Good point. One of the things that I think is like an insider to take away that I took from not just the experience but even more talking to Mike about this was the effort to be or not the effort but the power of being authentic, I guess, which is maybe kind of an overused buzzword as yet be authentic on your social media. But if they would have like I think about today and people are still trying to become relevant on social media and respond to different events and they'll share memes and whatnot as brands, even if it's something that's well designed or clever or a nice curated post but it's clearly evident that you've been preparing on this and you have taken the time to build it up and it's like a pure –
This is an advertisement that doesn't hit the same way as something like what Oreo did where by responding in real-time, you knew there are people like me watching this game having thoughts about it that are attached to the brand. And so while the Oreo brand was still a brand, it was a company online. I think it made it seem more like relatable that they were tweeting like an individual instead of like a brand kind of. Like they were responding the way we are all responding as people. It wasn't like, all right, I scheduled in advance at 12 p.m. This post goes out. It was clearly not one of those. It was like someone hitting the buttons at this account, there's people there.
Everyone who tries to plan and, and provide a formula for virality online, like I don't buy into that. There's no perfect recipe to make something quote unquote viral. But I would think that's one ingredient that might help you is come across as people behind a brand, not just this big faceless organization. I don't know, does that make sense to you or do you have anything to add to that?
Jacqueline Crane (00:08:12) - Yeah. So a lot of what I think of, especially with a communications background, is we talk about how to get brands to communicate and join the conversation in a way that's going to resonate and relate, right? And in the PR function and sense, you're trying to do that with a goal to change behavior or to change perception and different things like that. So digging into the word authentic, I think really, it's what Mike was talking about when he said we're talking about real time marketing here. I mean, that's all that the social media world talks about nowadays, right? If you're not using the trending sound or if you're doing those real-time actions to be involved in the conversation and that's really a first step to being authentic and to joining the conversation.
And then I think that second step and that second part of planning and doing that is being relevant and being valuable. People want to see something relevant to them, they want to see something that is also valuable. How can it affect their lives? How can it relate to what they're experiencing? How can it even relate to the trend or the dance? I mean, it can be funny, right? It doesn't have to be serious all the time. But having it be relevant, having it be valuable and having it be real time are three really important steps and keys to being authentic and being part of that conversation. I think like you said, there's no formula for going viral. But I think those are trends or I guess patterns that I see because really you can't guarantee what's going to go viral but those are things that people will attach to.
Camden Bernatz (00:09:56) - Yeah, you brought up a good point a minute ago about like the providing of value and that doesn't have to mean buy 1, get 1, 50% off like sales value like that's one form of value. But I think a lot of brands get stuck trying to constantly think, how do we sell this? How do we sell, sell, sell? So with your experience and your overseeing of the landscape of PR and especially social media, can you speak a little bit to the value that can so like an Oreo, they didn't pepper promotion, they didn't have a sale they offered, the value was just in providing a little bit of humor, a little bit of relevancy for the moment realizing that someone else was watching the game like you are and responding a certain way. Like, sorry, my question got lost in my description.
But do you have any experiences? Like, so this happened back, I think it was 2013 and which to me, it felt like that should be yesterday, but that's actually a number of years ago now at this point. With the way things have changed and the way that brands are representing themselves online, Mike, when we asked him, he thought that like the way that happened, the way it went viral couldn't happen today wouldn't be as big of a deal today. What's your response to that? Do you feel like there's no recipe for virality? But do you feel like that would have done the same thing today if it went out or how do you feel like a tweet like that would be received by the public today?
Jacqueline Crane (00:11:14) - Camden, you sure know how to ask a hard question because like you said, you can't guarantee it's going to go viral. I think a big part depends on who's saying it. If there's a big brand that everyone is already familiar with, already following, they probably have a little bit more power to say something that people are going to resonate with, right? Then more people following their notifications, all that stuff. I think there's also something to be said about smaller brands going viral as well. And I mean, there's someone on Instagram that I followed just the other day that was sharing their first reel that sent them viral and sent them into the bigger leagues, so-to-speak with followers in the social media world. And it's different, it's a Reel first off, right? This one's just an image like that would never work in today's world versus there are people doing funny dances and funny, like skits and songs and different things like that, right?
So I think social media because it's such an ever-changing world, those things that go viral are going to be ever-changing as well. So a simple answer, no, I don't think a single image dunk in the dark would last in today's world. So Mike is very right in the sense that things are also a 24-hour news cycle and you're going to get lost before you make a stand. So short answer. No. But in the same wavelength of that, I think there are things that can make an impact and can go viral. It's just a matter of what. And I think there's a lot of different articles or different things that talk about quality versus quantity. Obviously, everyone has their own opinions on that as well, but you kind of just have to play around. You have to be willing to take a stab at some of those more risky types of posts or risky situations to see what's going to stick.
Camden Bernatz (00:13:15) - Yeah. So having run different in various capacities, manage social media or PR efforts for different clients, how would you categorize the value or not categorize? But how would you, I guess pitch or like explain the value of something like this Oreo tweet to a client? By that I mean, there were no direct sales, there wasn't like, oh, look how many this tweet didn't directly result in like Oreo sales. I mean, they probably saw a bump but you can go see residual effects. But why does it matter as a brand that your tweet was going quote unquote viral? And again, that might mean different things in different platforms in different time periods what classifies that. But like when they didn't directly sell Oreos, why was it worthwhile for Oreo to have a team in a war room watching the Super Bowl ready to respond to stuff that isn't necessarily selling the product? Why is that valuable?
Jacqueline Crane (00:14:08) - Yes, this is a very hard discussion. You're essentially talking about ROI, return on investment, for those that may not know the acronym. It's really hard in a PR world to do that in a social media world. First off, because you're right, social media can't necessarily be tied to sales. You're going to have to click on links and profile links and websites and all sorts of things to get a sale and so it doesn't translate very well. I think that's when I end up using different metrics to try to illustrate that. So obviously, in the social world, a big one is engagements. Not even just impressions or views. Everything is trending towards engagements. Are they commenting? Are they sharing? How specific of an engagement can we get out of this?
The other thing with PR is obviously more of that perception or sentiment is a big metric that we can follow in that area. Are things positive? Are they negative? Obviously, with Oreo, we have a very good positive sentiment and I think in today's world, sometimes you get a little muddied. There's a lot of different controversy and the internet brings to light a lot of voices so sentiment can often be a little bit different. Other things that you can look at are I guess lifetime value of that conversation or of that message.
Camden Bernatz (00:15:35) - Talking about an hour, right? –
Jacqueline Crane (00:15:36) - Yeah, it's harder to track that and it's harder to see that when you're in the moment. I mean, obviously, in 2013, Oreo did not know the lasting impact that this would have. And so I love how Mike talked about how this is now a case study in schools, how the conversation is still being had about this. And even in December after the last episode went live, Oreo published a press release with PR Newswire about it. It's titled “A Decade in the Making, Oreo returns to the big game in 2024.” So the fact that they're still –
Camden Bernatz (00:16:12) - They’re coming back.
Jacqueline Crane (00:16:12) - Yep, the fact that they're still marketing based on that tweet, they're still bringing that into the conversation. It's still being talked about is a huge lifetime value of that campaign and of that social tweet ad platform, everything. Those are things that you can measure and look at. And again, there's no number. It's not okay, this equates to 5000 marketing dollars, which of course, this would never be that small. But I find it difficult when executives and business people go to measure an ad or a social post or something in dollars because it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. You have to take into account some of those non-quantifiable benefits.
Camden Bernatz (00:17:05) - Do you think they'll make reference to that in their Super Bowl ad? Or we just be totally a new thing? I wonder if they like refer back to it.
Jacqueline Crane (00:17:11) - Oh, I don't know. So the press release actually does mention or tease something. It doesn't tell us what it is. But it does say that Oreo, the Oreo brand promises a spot that puts a playful twist on the cookies, iconic role in pop culture. The Mondelez International Cookie Brand will air a 32nd spot from the Martin Agency during the second quarter on February 11th, 2024. So stay tuned to everybody. It's really just a tease but nonetheless, a really exciting announcement.
Camden Bernatz (00:17:40) - Nice and a little teaser for our podcast is we're going to have a little response, a little reaction episode after the Super Bowl and about the Super Bowl ads about what we think worked, didn't work. And hopefully we can identify some good stories or some behind-the-scenes things we want to seek out and have some new content to plan on based on that. So we'll see. So anyways, stay tuned to our podcast, please.
Jacqueline Crane (00:18:06) - Subscribe.
Camden Bernatz (00:18:07) - Yeah. Yeah, subscribe. Like what's something from a brand perspective, not a personal on social media, like just an individual, but as a brand on social media, what's one thing you love about social media? What's one thing you hate about it.
Jacqueline Crane (00:18:22) - Oh noise. I'm sure everyone's going to say that. There's so many brands, so many pages, so many different things that you can do that it's often difficult to pick or you're following all of them and the algorithm will automatically not show you any of them. Right? Yeah. And from a brand perspective myself that makes it difficult for brands to compete, right, or to be a part of that conversation. The thing I do like about social media and brands is the fact that I can get information about a brand however I want it, right? So I can choose, I think at least in the PR world, everyone talks about media. Like, oh, I watched the news to get my news and you still have some older generations doing that. They'll say, oh, I watched, I don't know Good Things Utah or Studio Five and I learned about this and I have a lot of connections where I'll say, well, I follow them on social media already, right?
So you can choose how you consume a brand's information. And I think social media is a great way to get information quickly. There's a lot of conversation going on about how TikTok is almost becoming its own potential news site because you can get information about various world happenings quickly.
Camden Bernatz (00:19:46) - The engagement for better or for worse like sometimes that you might get in a bad situation, but you can also utilize it. The engagement is a modern aspect of advertising that wasn't always there. You think about, like, 1963 you'd run some TV ad and whether someone thought it was funny or annoying or they loved it or they hate it, you might hear a little buzz here and there in certain circles but you kind of just saw it and it existed in your living room on the TV while it ran and that was it. And you couldn't say you couldn't go and like, tell the brand itself how you thought about it. Nor more did you even this, like, think to do so. Nowadays someone puts out and there's comment section or there's response videos or there's parody and it's so easy to do that kind of stuff now.
Like I said, for better or for worse, we have a few examples of some episodes coming up in which we talked about how that led to that helped the virality of a campaign get bigger and better and that's great. But then you have some situations that we recently like Budweiser had some situation or not Budweiser, Bud Light where they had some controversy and they had lots of comments section and stuff of things that they didn't want to be there. So you can live by it, die by it. But that's a unique aspect of being a brand on social media is that they can get to you, they can talk to you, they can respond to you in your brand in a way that wasn't always available.
Jacqueline Crane (00:21:07) - And I think that's valuable for brands to realize as well especially small businesses. I'll take a minute to speak to them because a lot of our clients can are smaller businesses and the campaigns that some of them are doing are big for them and that's great, that's a great way to join the conversation. But I know of a recent client we had where they did a big campaign and it was successful in our marketer eyes and then we heard a little bit from them and they said, but so and so complained about this or so and so came in and talked to us and complained. And you think about it as a scale, as a percentage, right? You had X amount of results from the campaign and those were all positive sentiment. You've got a great engagement metric engagement rate. You got the goal of the campaign was accomplished. But the small percentage of negative responses, yes, there is a downside to joining the conversation to taking that risk and doing something.
But it's something that you can still join the conversation for, right? Like that's feedback that you can respond to with that potential customer or current customer. You can do a follow-up campaign or something in order to address that. And so there's so many different benefits to even just learning what your customer is thinking that you can respond or not. I mean, there is choice in everything and so yeah, good and bad things.
Camden Bernatz (00:22:38) - Yeah, like all marketing tools you can use it for your advantage or you can misuse it or you can ignore it if you want, but a lot of times you get left behind. So it's just a matter of being strategic and whatever you're using. Right? Well, I want to address the listeners for just a minute here with you, Jacqueline, if anybody who's been following this show, which hopefully we got a few of those now. We're still getting bigger and stronger. But you may have noticed unfortunately that Jacqueline is the first female we've had in our show so far. Glad that you're here, glad that you are the first, but it shouldn't be taking this long. I want everyone to know I would love to have more female guests on and Jacqueline's obviously from internally our agency, she's not even one of our like a brand or campaign-related guests on there.
I've been trying to reach out to all kinds of people and haven't had any luck lately with some of the business leaders on the female side, and so I'd love to get some more. So if you're listening to this and you either are part of a brand that has a great story, male or female, not just females, I'd love to have you on and if you have recommendations of people that you know would like to talk to us that have a great behind the scenes story of a certain brand move, a rebrand, a campaign, anything advertising or branding related, we want good stories and we want interesting people and we'd encourage you to share it with us. So if you have any suggestions or want to reach out for any, any other reason, you can reach us at hello@ekragency.com and we'll check that. Hopefully, hear from you guys soon.
And Jacqueline, thank you for being on today. We know you're a very busy person but are very up-to-date with the industry as well and are doing many good things. For those who want to either get in touch with you or to see what you're up to or contact you in any way, what's the best way to follow you or get in touch with you?
Jacqueline Crane (00:24:24) - Yeah, I'm trying to get more active on LinkedIn. I do have an updated profile and I answer all messages, so that's probably a good place to start. It's jacqueline-crane and we can put that in the description or something for people to get there. But you can also email me at jacqueline@ekragency.com.
Camden Bernatz (00:24:48) - Nice. And you're going to share this episode to all your network wants to listen to this and subscribe to our show, right?
Jacqueline Crane (00:24:54) - Yes, I also manage the EKR social so you can follow us anywhere and you will see it.
Camden Bernatz (00:25:00) - Perfect. Well, again, thank you for being on. I'm looking forward to the Super Bowl coming up for not only the game, I like football but I'm a real big fan of the ads and we'll see what Oreo does and maybe there'll be a viral tweet here or there or whatever you call the X post nowadays. Do you call it Twitter still or do you call it X? You don't call it anything.
Jacqueline Crane (00:25:24) - I use it in language that much. I use it but I never said it that often enough to have an opinion.
Camden Bernatz (00:25:31) - I feel like it. I mean, it is X but every, I'm surprised how much the industry has just been like, yeah, we're still going to call it Twitter. I see Twitter written like currently in current publications all the time and it makes me laugh because they just didn't respond to the rebrand.
Jacqueline Crane (00:25:46) - It depends on what article and what company you're talking to. There's actually a lot of 2024 trend articles coming out now that say like advertising and different actions on Twitter X might not be the place to be. It just depends. We'll have to see what happens.
Camden Bernatz (00:26:00) - Yeah, it's definitely a… what's the word? Volatile, a hotbed of -- Yeah, it's not the most stable place to be right now if you're a brand. But hey, I invite anyone who's listening to utilize it, not just during the Super Bowl, but any moment you might be able to join the conversation on. So, anyways, again, thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe, we appreciate all of that and we're slowly growing. We want to get to find our people. I know there's people out there who are interested in the behind-the-scenes, entertaining aspects of these things. I don't think it's just me and we're finding more and more of them.
So, again, the nature of this podcast is to try to be to show how the creative sausage gets made, so to speak. It's not just talking about platitudes about marketing and advertising, it's not academic. We want to get those good stories and stay tuned for another one coming up soon that we are recording that I believe you'll all know about this campaign. We're going to have a producer who helped put to bring to life, the Berries and Cream Little Lad Starburst commercial, one of the wackiest goofiest commercials out there and another one that went viral. So stay tuned for that and we will see you next time.
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