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- [00:00]
A
Everyone thinks viral moments happen by accident, that they are luck. But in actuality, over the last couple of years, we've proved out that virality is a science. And at the end of this episode, you'll have a seven step framework for how to go viral on demand for your brand, no matter what category you are. So we're going to walk through these seven different ways that you can construct a viral marketing moment. Super excited about this one. If you're not already subscribed to the channel, please, like, subscribe. Leave a comment if you like what we're talking about, subscribe. If you don't like the glasses, if you think Alex should cut his hair, just let us know. But. All right, let's get into the episode. What is the biggest viral marketing moment you remember from this year? Probably two, actually.
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B
Probably the Kendrick and Drake beef.
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A
Yeah.
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B
You know, like that, that was something that was taking over culture for, for sure. Right. So there's, there's elements there and more. So the marketing around, like Kendrick and Drake, like, they both did their own things. Second, from like a really tactical marketing lens, probably Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle.
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A
The American Eagle one. The great jeans.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Right.
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B
Had to be like, it's still relevant.
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A
It's everywhere.
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B
I mean, with like the GQ interview, like, or Vogue or whatever it was.
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A
Yeah. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Right.
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B
100%.
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A
So the reason I ask is because I think that campaign and many other campaigns like it have seven core principles that go into pretty much every viral marketing moment. If you think about the Sydney Cindy Sweeney American Eagle great jeans, then that's a narrative. Right. So the first thing that people are going to need to establish whenever they want to create a viral marketing moment is the narrative. And when I say narrative in this way, I want people to think about it as like the one sentence that the Internet will repeat about that campaign. So if you can't explain the moment in one line, it's not going to spread. Spot on. You have to think about, like, I'm chatting with McCoy and I'm like, yo, you see the Sydney Sweeney Good Genes ad, You see that new brand talking about nature's epic. Like, this can apply to pretty much everything, but you have to have that core one liner that's extremely clear, a little bit witty, and describes the brand's relationship and what they're trying to promote in that moment. Because the audience is going to share the story. They're not going to share the sku, not going to share the product.
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B
Even on our, on our onboarding calls, we always ask the one question and say, like, if you wanted someone, if you wanted one of your followers to try to convince another person to follow you, they could only describe your content in one sentence. What is that? And it's like, and you have to have some kind of central narrative. I know you're talking about campaigns, but you have to be able to have the thing that you're going to build around and, you know, way that the somebody's going to talk about it as well, a.
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A
A CPG brand and. Cause the next thing that I want to talk about is, number two is you have to seed the right creators with either product or information. So, you know, this can be like, obviously if you send, if you gift a bunch of creators a product or if you're in the apparel space, like Skims obviously just did this with their, like, you know, somewhat controversial, like Bush underwear, right? Like they send it to a bunch of people and then all of a sudden it drives a ton of conversation. So you're going to want to seed the right creators. But to take a CPG example, I made a video about David Protein back in the day in their launch masterclass, which I think they've done an incredible job hijacking attention across many things, right? Their movie trailer style tagline is the macros, right? 26 gram, 28 grams protein, 150 calories for the right audience. That's crazy, right? However, what they did an excellent job of is actually sowing controversy with buying that EPG manufacturer. Because what they did is they created the controversy and then they seeded all of the fitness influencers with that information. All of a sudden, if you're a fitness influencer, you have to talk about this product, you have to talk about what they did, whether its implications are. Because you can't miss out on the current event that your entire industry is discussing, you know, Similarly, I think people in the fashion industry have to talk about this with collabs. Like, there's kind of different ways to do it. But, you know, you want to basically like, make sure that anywhere from like 100 to 300 creators have the right information. I think we see a lot of this on TikTok shop where, you know, to. To drill it down into a singular phrase. I think this, this Yerba Mate brand did an incredible job talking about nature zempic, right? They. It's an appetite suppressant. Which brand? It's called Yerba Magic. I think they got banned off TikTok at this point. But, you know, we're always in the Gray hat realm. But it's like you want thousands of creators using the same punchline, hook, or catchphrase. You know, you want to establish that as a brand, and so many people think that you can crowdsource that information. I think you should actually be drilling into, like, what are five different options. You know, we. We have this at a micro level with Salud, where it's like, bro, it's so cracked. In the Latino community. All we have to do is use the authentic flavor name, which is like the product name, and then electrolytes, Horchata, electrolytes, Pepino, limone, electrolytes, and it immediately hits for the right audience, and it's very, very shareable and spreadable. And what we do is just brute force the algorithm with that. And it's kind of funny. We actually. So to give a more practical example of this as well, they had a churro flavor that we dropped, and it was. It's fire. Salud has the best hydration packets in the game. Tyler, I know you're listening to this, but they. It's actually, like, unparalleled. So we did a promotion of their churro flavor. And I kind of knew because we had had the horchata core protein shake, you know, collaboration or, like, viral moment earlier this year where people would put horchata into a core protein shake on ice. And that was, like, this huge moment in the Latino community. And I knew we could do something similar with churro and warm fall drinks, because people want to have, like, a hottie toddy or, like, whatever it is, like a hottie toddy mocktail with churro. And lo and behold, like, the number one video was a hot churro latte printed, like 150,000 sales. Crushed it in September.
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B
Until this moment, I thought Salud was an alcohol brand.
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A
They move like an alcohol brand. They've been partying for sure. Shout out. Josh Leiba.
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B
I don't know.
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A
Crazy bastard.
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B
Like, if the tequila.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It just has the vibe that it could be a tequila, but this makes a whole lot of sense.
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A
Yeah, yeah. They're on, like, a healthy, authentic flavors type of way.
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B
Okay, so they're like an element for Hispanics.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Probably not positioned here for athletes and whatnot.
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A
Yeah. I think a little more flavor profile rather than, like, functionality, but still. Yes, I know that that's super interesting. I mean, honestly, I think they're just a dominant hydration brand at this point. Like, I'll go. I was golfing the other day with my buddy Rohan, who's, like, Indian, and he's like, yeah, this is my favorite electrolyte pack. So I think they've. They've done an incredible drug immunities. You know, I'm not going on record saying that you're not going to get me today.
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B
People that would eat churros.
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A
No, I've ordered a. Bro, I'm a. From Santa. Come on. I was in San Antonio, baby. Churros can fit in your mouth, so.
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B
All right, can you get me some? I mean, I'll buy it regardless, but.
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A
Come on, bro, you buy a 20 electrolyte packet. Damn.
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B
That's why I was like.
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A
I cited.
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B
I'm like, it was 24.
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A
I don't need you to ask. I don't need to ask you for this. Let me get the Alex Garcia sample pack that. All right. So once you kind of, you know, see the creators with the one unified phrase, I also think that the biggest thing that you need to do is world build through your own content. So in the past, I think a brand that has done this extremely well, I documented on my IG is Malbourne. So whenever Malvin has an upcoming collection, they'll, you know, tease, document and showcase throughout the process. So I think you want to go a step further and drill into, like, what should that teaser have? I think a teaser should tap nostalgia. It should attach to a cultural tent pole. It should ultimately, you know, tell people when the product is coming. And last, similar for the immutable laws of power or of content that you did last episode. Like, drill into that first frame, you know, the visual hook. Like, lock in on the visual hook. Because it's not just enough to broadcast an announcement, right? Like, you have to use nostalgia attached to a cultural temple and also, like, you know, make sure that it's got the action, the, you know, text that is kind of needed, like, build some curiosity, some anticipation, whatever. But yeah, they've got a tease, document and showcase to create a moment. In my opinion, Number four is adding a participation mechanism. People who have done this really well is like Mr. Beast and like some different, you know, kind of creator brands. But I do think the idea of a rare find somewhere in the batch, right, like, you know, get a golden can or something like that. Like, Hu is one of our brands. They've got this green strength that they're promoting. And I think it would be awesome if, like, they did a golden can, you know, in Target and that was like a part, like the protein. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they just. They just got into, you know, the green space. Like, they're. They're crushing it. And I think you want to add a participation mechanism on top of this overall branded campaign. Right. So, like, how cool would it be if in the American Eagle Sydney Sweeney campaign they had actually had like, you know, 15 of those jeans were like embroidered with her signature or something like that. Like some sort of, like resale down the line, you know, mechanism there. I think that part is like, underrated too, because it should be built into the overall nature of this thing. Right. Like the Easter egg. And it becomes very shareable. It's a reason for people to participate in the campaign and it's engaging. So. And it just feeds your content and.
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B
And there's, I think, some pieces to understand about it as well. Where like, well, one Feastables was doing that 2023. Right. Like circa 2023, when they were having golden tickets, they were having all sorts of different things within random Feastables. And so it drove a ton of retail foot trap there.
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A
Right, right.
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B
That's. That's one layer. The second layer that I think is interesting is you can do these in areas where you don't have a lot. Like where you're struggling. Right. Like, if Feasibles is not doing well in Texas, you can do that specifically in Texas. Totally. Right. And like those are other elements where you could look at the different areas, the different retail presences or. Yeah, retail presence, where you're not selling as much as you should be and figure out your ways of layering in gamification or participation into those. Into those places.
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A
Yeah. Which, you know, the more that I talk to big retailers, it's really interesting. They are looking for brands that can drive visits. Visit occasions is the terminology that they use to the actual store, to the physical store. Because the way that they look at everything is like a. Okay, so like the basket. Right. It's like you go into retail and you have a basket, maybe you're picking up some cheese, maybe you're picking up some Tic Tac, like some, you know, thumbtacks. Like, there's such a variety of things that you're going to put into your basket when you're actually in the store and when you're browsing things. And so what they're looking for is these D2C brands who have done an excellent job demonstrating they can get a lot of traffic and can then drive visits so that there's kind of that sprinkle downstream across the rest of the portfolio. It's like if I go to Target for a Huel Green can for. For a pack of fuels I'm. Maybe I'm also going to get paper towels. You know, maybe I'm also going to get some hand soap. Like, maybe. Oh, shit. Like, I need a new pillow. Like, I might accidentally get a new pillow. Like, there's just so much product discovery that happens at the visit level. And that's really the focus of these brands is how do we continue to drive visits and their focus of the retailer. And so, again, if you're a brand who is looking to do something like this in a major store and you're adding a participation mechanism, all of a sudden you're a darling to them, you know, they can't lose you. I mean, Joyride coffee. I was about to say Joyride, bro. The way Target loves that, man.
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B
You said Joyride coffee.
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A
Joyride candy.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Just FYI, I might need some more coffee. No, I agree.
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B
Yeah, they have to, bro.
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A
I think Joyride is Target's favorite brand. They might have been brand of the year, straight up.
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B
Believe it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I mean, what Ryan's probably done for them is crazy.
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A
He's a unicorn. And, you know, ultimately, it's like you should be trying to be 70% as good as them at at what they do. And I mean, the. The key is, you know, just that's what he always does. He's like, I'm at the lowest performing target in our entire portfolio and I'm giving out Joy Ride or, like, talking to people, and it's like, road dog, dude.
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B
I would love to have him on.
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A
The pod for sure. That'd be incredible. I. I would love that. Shout out, Nick E. Right. I. Damn. All right, so the next one is creating the big swing visual. And I think with this one, you want to get more extreme than you're comfortable with. Right. Like, if there's one thing I firmly believe, it is that, like, you either want to be the Ritz Carlton in today's day and age or the Motel 6. Like, you either want to be maximalist luxury, like, known for something, or you just kind of want to be slop and like, super mass market. Shout out Nick from Truff, because he is. He has a really interesting thought process in all of this, having built Truff, and I'm not going to go into it, but the summary is, like, if you want to sell to kings, sit with the masses. If you want to sell to the masses, sit with the kings. Because the level of scale that you have going super, super mass market is so unbelievable. And Truff is obviously a very, very premium position. Good. And so the next evolution for them is, you know, going more mass market, going broader appeal. Anyways, you know, this is kind of the visual, the big swing visual. This is the visual anchor. Right, right. And you know, this is something that obviously the Sydney Sweeney going back to that campaign, like the, the signature visual is the image that everyone has seen of her where she's like kind of sitting down and like looking into the camera and like it's a very recognizable thing you're going to plaster everywhere. So consider, you know, like what is going to be my big swing visual and how extreme can I get with that? Right, like how eye catching, captivating can I get with that?
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B
Trying to think of other campaigns have done a very, very good job with that. I mean, Nike kind of did it with like winning is in for everyone and the way they plaster that across all. Yeah, like their, their billboards and.
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A
Well, a lot of this stuff is getting hyper fragmented too, you know, like, like Nike running is doing Nike running. They're also doing like win ads for all their different basketball players, like, and you know, athletes.
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B
Is there anyone else that comes to mind that's done an amazing job of this this year?
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A
Yeah, yeah, like the, the, the big brands, you know, like Severance had like a pop up of their office in, you know, they had it in Grand Central in Grand Central Terminal in New York. So I mean that's kind of one.
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B
Oh, Kith did that too with Padel.
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A
Right, right. So I mean there, there are some like that. Anyway, so go for that big swing visual and then this one is probably something that y' all have heard us talk about a lot. But ultimately, like, I think is one of the hardest pills to swallow about creating a viral moment and that is stacking scarcity and urgency into the drop. There's a brand called Shinzo that I just did a video on. It's like Japanese inspired streetwear and they do an amazing job world building. They do an amazing job pretty much with everything that we're talking about because they're a Japanese brand. They're tied to Japanese fashion ideals. They use loose cultural allusions to Japanese, you know, ideals such as like, you know, discipline and prestige and what, whatever. And they just don't get greedy with their stock. Like, you know, you're, if you're not in the moment, you're not going to get their stuff. They sell out. And you know, I think what that does is you really hack someone's mind share of like they now have to pay attention to you. You know, like if, if I miss the drop. And I want the product. Like I can't get it otherwise.
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B
This is a sick brand. I've never seen them.
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A
Yeah, they're cool and I have seen them. Can't get any of their stuff. You know, it's like you go to their website, they're sold out of pretty much every item that you actually want. And it's because they're just running limited stock and they're making sure that there's like pretty much a three day window for you to actually get the drop. So it's a lot of delayed gratification. You hear about us talk about it on everything, but does pay off at the end.
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B
It's so funny because I was about to call them a Japanese like Cody Phillips. Do you remember Cody Phillips?
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A
Yeah, I mean Cody Phillips is a, is a British Shinzo probably, right? Is that where you're gonna go?
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B
No, I think Cody Phillips is much bigger. I think Cody Phillips has 4 to 500,000 followers.
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A
Oh really?
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B
Let me, let me fact check this now. 175. Okay, interesting.
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A
They're on par with each other.
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B
Yeah. But what I will say is the Shinzo stole Cody Phillips and how he did the lookbook. So do you remember the lookbook that Cody Phillips did where it was like top down but they, and they did it like it was part of their actual campaign where it was like different kind of stories that they were telling about like some robberies and some share like whatever. It was something along those lines. And then, dude, the amount of people that I'm seeing doing like the top down with like props around them is crazy.
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A
Yeah. And the person's like dead for some reason. Why are they always dead? You gotta stop killing models. There's an epidemic out there.
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B
But I mean, so I wonder though is like Shinzo is only posted 49 times. The first one was in 2022. Like, I wonder if they delete their content.
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A
I think they definitely do because like everything on their page is a hitter. I mean they're putting up crazy numbers though, some of these. Yeah, bro. You know, like their flat lays are good.
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B
Their overhead shot has 80, 84,000 and the other one has 153,000.
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A
Like, I mean, I think both of these brands probably took a lot of inspiration from about blank and, and twisted that 3%. Like when I think about the OG clothing brand that, that really used short form in carousels effectively it was about blank back in the day. And then now everyone has access to that same learning. And so that's why you're seeing A lot of the different similarities between all of it, like this go.
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B
I mean, yeah, this brain goes hard.
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A
You're going to see so much Shinzo on this dude in like two months. So anyways, introduce scarcity because you know, once you do that like customers will respect it and they understand that you mean it. I think that's another big thing. Like the churro flavor basically for Salud was like very much so. Like, hey, this is like once we run out, we run out. You're never going to get it again. And that allowed our affiliates, you know, when we have a thousand creators broadcasting that same message, it drives a lot of scarcity and purchase decision from the customer if they really want to try it. And the last thing is you really want to synchronize everything across a 48 to 72 hour window. And so this is one of the biggest things that I don't think people plan enough for because to do so is actually almost a quarterly initiative. Yeah. When we're talking to brands, we're saying, you know, you need to give us six weeks before you want your moment to engineer it. Like if you want this moment to happen, you know, January 15th, I would recommend starting on December 1st. Because we're going to have a lot of different logistical challenges in the first three, four weeks before creators are have their information, before we know how we want to package the statements, the narrative, the one liner, the punchline, the catchphrase. Like all these different things. Like you almost want to workshop well in advance. And then the thing is also posts take time to ramp up their views. It's very rare that a post is just like nuclear viral overnight anymore. I don't know why IG is doing this. TikTok's the same way. I feel like I'm seeing mostly things that were from a couple months ago almost sometimes and depends on the format.
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B
Right. Like if you're introducing new formats that people that you've never done, like the algo just based is learning based off the content that a brand has published.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And so if you're introducing new formats and I wouldn't say new characters but predominantly new formats.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It has to find people that are going to like those. And like that is not a tomorrow kind of thing.
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A
Yeah, exactly. And you know, I think it's, it's, it's another learning that we've been discussing with a lot of these brands is like if I post this was a super interesting insight from the target team was most of Halloween candy sales happened the last week and it's so much demand in FOMO for people to have to have that candy that they'll run. God, I hope I can talk about this publicly. They'll run promo basically for the six weeks prior in September and first couple weeks of October. So all the candy will be on promo.
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B
Right.
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A
It's like go get a bundle of Reese's and hershey's and it's 30% off or whatever, coupons, whatever. That last week they don't have to promo because there's so much demand from, you know, late adopters.
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B
Can you imagine you fuck up all KD sales for Target because of this. No one starts shopping out the last week anymore.
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A
I just expose them, like completely ruin them, honestly. Like I would be worried about that if it's not gonna happen more. So just like the entire content ecosystem is like everything just gets washed away in two seconds. But anyways. And honestly shout out the Target team if they're listening to this. That'd be fantastic. But that insight to me was really interesting because as we talk about like how are we going to amplify seasonal moments? Easter candy is very similar, you know, where it's that last week Rush and I personally think what we're going to do is we're going to create content that'll say, you know, you never want to be the mom that misses the east, the Reese's eggs in her kids basket, something like that. I think if you post that content on October or on just say easter is on April 7th. I think if you post that content on March 10th, March 15th, I think that content will spike April 4th, three days before Easter. Like it will, it will spike at the right time. I think the algorithms are so smart that you want to put those urgency based creatives into the algorithm weeks before so that they spike at the right time. Um, and so again, just underscoring the importance of as you're a brand, thinking about how you're going to activate these influencers, your own content, like calendar, you know, the participation mechanism, like you want to synchronize everything obviously around that like 48 to 72 hour window where you think you're going to peak and make sure it all kind of is cohesive and goes together and that's how you engineer a viral moment.
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B
Spot on. I think two parts like viral content, viral moments, etc, it's all in art and science.
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A
Yeah.
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B
You can manufacture it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Like in it. But you do have to, you truly have to understand like the strategy behind any of those things.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And it's funny because like, it's. It's not just about, oh, I think this is a good idea. Like, that's not enough in today's age. No, it's like, this is the idea that we're gonna. We're going to. We're going to create around. How do I pull levers in all these different areas to amplify that idea? Totally. Like, that is the key here. Like, I bet you American Eagle did go to all these different theme pages and had them talk about this weeks before that. It. Before, like, it, you know, really hit mass market. Etc.
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A
Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. It's. It's in every PR agency's, you know, email inbox two months before the strict NDA, you know, and I think you can shock and surprise people if you're at, like, a mass, mass, mass market level, of course. But, like, I want this information to be valuable down to the 5 million a year brands where it's like, Bro, run that seven step playbook. And obviously at each level, you are going to have to have some art. Yeah. You know, but that is the science is those seven components. Hopefully. I mean, through this podcast, we've touched on every single one of those components, on how to actually execute it tactically. But if you follow those seven steps, like, you have a good chance. Like, you have a very, very good chance.
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B
100 good episode. Two good episodes.
- [24:18]
A
Cool. All right, well, if you enjoyed as always, please like, subscribe if you're not already subscribed. We know that most of y' all are not subscribed.
- [24:25]
B
Do your thing.
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A
That's cap.
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B
It was something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving.
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A
Yeah, please. I guess this is the. No, this is. This is the December 2episode, but we'll.
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B
Probably put this one out before my episode.
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A
Okay.
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B
So that it's. It's like we hit part one and then part two is right after. Cool. You know what I'm saying?
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A
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right, y'. All, Catch you next week.