← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
Guide to Fan-First, Brand-Second Marketing with Dan Salkey and Dean Harrison | Ep. 335
00:55:26
Loading summary
Transcript74 lines
- [00:03]
Daniel Murray
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray, and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind Marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the off. We are back with another episode of the Market Millennials. I have two people on the podcast. I know you normally hear one person, but we have two people on the podcast today. Dan and Dean. Dan, I know you said we must have Dean on this podcast, so I'll let you do the intro for Dean, but I'm excited to chat to you both.
- [00:49]
Dan Salke
Yeah, thank you very much, Dan. From one Dan to another. Yeah, I mean, just briefly before I introduce Dean, you're probably wondering, who is this weird English doppelganger of Daniel Murray here? I' I'm Dan Salke. I'm the founder and strategy partner at an agency called Small World. In a nutshell, we help brands be more entertaining. We actually recently released a piece of research called Entertain or Die, which looked at the most entertaining brands in the world, what makes them entertaining, and whether that entertainment value drives share price. But I always feel like it's all well and good talking about theory. And when I was speaking to you, Dan, I said, we need to bring someone on who's actually practicing this and living it out in the real world. And Dean and I have kind of been sort of twin flames when it comes to entertainment first marketing for a while now, and he's the senior director of social media at Subway, and they've actually just brought out a fantastic campaign to coincide with the release of Happy Gilmore to Subway. Being a brand that is kind of intrinsically linked to that, that kind of film franchise has made total sense to kind of bring Dean on to hopefully talk about entertainment first, brand building, why it's important, how it works, why it works with a living, breathing example that's out in the wild right now. So, yeah, thanks for coming on, Dean.
- [02:06]
Dean Harrison
Great. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Excited to be here.
- [02:09]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I want to get into this. So, like, why did the original Happy Gilmore scenes with Subway stick so hard for that audience? And what made it a perfect foundation to build a campaign 30 years later?
- [02:27]
Dean Harrison
That's a great question. So, you know, the Happy. The original Happy Gilmore and Subway moment, it wasn't just, you know, good product placement. It was perfect cultural placement, in my opinion. At least. It was loud, it was funny, it was unexpected, and I guess just like Happy Gilmore himself, it didn't try too hard to Sell you something. It was kind of part of the story, part of the joke, part of part of what made the movie unforgettable. And to me at least that's why it stuck. And it felt real. It lived in the culture. Even 30 years later was talking about it. People just didn't remember the sandwich. They remember kind of the feeling and the aura around the film and that connection. So when the sequel came around, it wasn't just about nostalgia for us. It was about picking up the story and pushing it forward. Happy still that guy. And Subway's still here for the underdogs, the big swings, I guess the moments that make people smile. So we're not just showing up. I think we belong in the story. We've earned the seat and we're making a massive splash this summer. So Subway is going to be the only quick service restaurant fully embedded in the happy Gilmore 2 universe. And through film integration in restaurant promotion and a digital ecosystem that will hopefully give fans a real way to play along and immerse themselves in the kind of the Happy Gilmore ecosystem. So with the Happy Gilmore meal and Subway's Happy Place digital hub, we're giving guests a chance to win up to a million dol in Subway cash. $250,000 in Topgolf vouchers. Plus my favorite, we have weekly big ass checks. A little cue for the original film with those big golf checks that Happy won and we even have a Mountain Dew golf cart that I desperately want myself up for grabs. So to me at least It's a True360 campaign built to honor the film over 30 years later. Celebrating the original fans, the new fans, trendy teens, co viewing audiences to create real per guests and every piece of it was designed to be 100 consumer first.
- [04:31]
Daniel Murray
It's actually feels, I feel like old thinking that that movie was so long ago and I, I, those are one of the, I would say it's one of the best. I feel like they don't make comedy movies like Happy Gilmore anymore.
- [04:43]
Dan Salke
Not at all. Man. One of Adam Sanders greats for sure. Yeah, 1996 was the year, the year so crazy.
- [04:50]
Daniel Murray
Like I feel like I remember watching that movie and I was just like I there's never been, there's never been, there's been some movies that are but it's just like one of the ones where you say like what comedy movie do you like? Love and Happy Gilmore is always in there. But like I'm gonna go ask you, Dan. Like, like nostalgia is like a key driver in like entertainment and a Lot of brands are using that today. But why should brains. And why is that brands are using nostalgia in their marketing today?
- [05:22]
Dan Salke
Yeah, I mean, if we. If we're talking about a macro level, it's actually, I think, a little bit of a dystopian answer for me to give first, but I feel like as the world gets more and more absurd, ridiculous, and kind of, you know, hard to take in, in many ways, we tend to look for comfort in nostalgia. We tend to look for. For comfort in escapism, in absurdism. Something that I think, you know, Happy Gilmore as a film has in spades. Crazy stat that I saw, which is that Gen Z, 37% of Gen Z feel nostalgic for the 90s and than feel nostalgic for the 70s, both time periods that many of them didn't even live in at all. So it's kind of crazy that they're, you know, you know, harking back to those times so much. I think, to Dean's point, though, you know, the brilliance of this campaign, this subway doing, isn't just down to nostalgia. And we'll definitely touch on a fair few of the things they're doing, but there's a few things that, you know, Dean touched on, like building brand law, making people feel like they're actually in the world of the film. Brand artifacts like the subway car and the checks, which are kind of things that, you know, are from the film then brought to life out in the real world. I think there's. There's. Yeah, just tons that we can sort of pick up on and sort of talk about beyond nostalgia. But nostalgia, yeah, for all of those reasons, is just a really strong driver of. Of kind of a strong driver of branded entertainment, basically because it allows us to escape into this other reality.
- [06:44]
Daniel Murray
Going into that, like, saying it's not just nostalgia. You didn't pick this just for nostalgia. And I think one of the things you're talking about is building the world. But, like, how did you think about making this more of a. For you, Dean? Like, more of a story instead of just like, hey, I want to, like, sponsor Happy Gilmore, like, make this a part. A sponsorship just for Happy Gilmore, just for the nostalgia sake. How were you thinking about that story? Weave into this?
- [07:14]
Dean Harrison
Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, sequels and reboots, they happen all the time, but not all of them, especially from a brand perspective, are worth betting on. Some, like Hollywood's rolling dice and hoping that we care. But this one for us, it wasn't that. It wasn't A gamble. This was a calculated win. First you've got Sandler back in the driver's seat. And when Sandler comes back to a character, you know it's because the story is actually worth telling. And then you add Netflix to the mix and the world's biggest streaming platform and suddenly, you know, we're not just making, they're not just making a sequel. They're creating a global pop culture moment. And as we spoke about earlier, like this, the original has a chokehold on audiences nearly 30 years. It's quotable, it's part of the cultural fabric. People didn't forget it and that's what they've been waiting for. You could feel the pent up demands. We even did like a fun little social landscape analysis and a lot of consumer insights about super fandom. The lures, guest perceptions of how this meal might change super fans from the film or current guests. And it was funny to see even groups of people still dressing up for Halloween as Happy Gilmore, people who weren't even alive when the first one came out. But you know, we say this is isn't nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. We're not dusting off those old VHS tapes and hoping people feel something. We're not here trying to microwave old feelings. We're here trying to create new energy with new stories and new cultural touch points, new ways for fans to jump in and actually play with the brand in ways that we feel are worth their time. We're trying to be respectful and consumer first through every touch point. So to me, nostalgia on its own is passive. It's a nice feeling. But if that's all you bring to the table, table people move on quickly. And what we're trying to do here is take that emotional connection and extend it. We're saying, you love this, then let's make you love it now. And so we're not chasing the past with this promotion. We're trying to help move the story forward with Subway right in the middle of it, with new films, new fans, new ways to engage between the in restaurant experience, the digital hub, the sweepstakes, the social extensions. You know, we're trying to create an entire ecosystem, like Dan said, for fans to step into that was really important for us. You know, it's not nostalgia, it's cultural participation. It's built for today's audiences with today's behaviors in mind in 2025. And it's in the places where people actually spend their time, which is online, which is social. And so we didn't tap into a Memory. We're trying to help build a moment.
- [09:50]
Daniel Murray
I love that. And also it's really funny that Gen Z are tapping into like 90s and 70s moments. More. More like, more so than like some millennials. I know, which is kind of crazy to me to think about. But I want to, I want to go into one more question for Dean. Like, what would you say is like the most like, challenging part of like this operation? It was like getting it like stood up or was it like the creative test that you were doing?
- [10:22]
Dean Harrison
That's a good question. I think, honestly, sinking everything, every part of this. The cups, the creative. So we have cups which are collectible cups. That's how you participate in the. Our campaign ethos was more happy. So other QSRs with celebrity meal deals or partnerships want to limit your choices. And we wanted to give every menu item over to happy. And so you can make any meal, Happy Gilmore meal with this collectible cup. And so syncing that up, even the developments of the cups, the approval of the creative, the paid, the packaging, the CRM, that's the real muscle. We have 22,000 restaurants across the U.S. in Canada that we're trying to execute this against. So scale is really important. We have to think of like French Canadian audiences, Spanish audiences as well. And so the big idea is one thing, but making sure it shows up everywhere in the same voice, with the same energy. That's where campaigns usually fall apart. And I give a lot of credit to our partners at Netflix for keeping us on track. They're experts at this and it came down to ruthless alignments and obsessive storytelling. We worked across so many partners. Netflix, Dentsu, our core and social agency, DoorDash, our in house teams, our influencer agency, get engaged. And we were all maniacal about making sure every touch point felt like it was part of the same story. So whether you saw a cop, an Instagram ad, an email or a scan QR code, it had to feel the same, with the same tone, the same world, the same width. Because that's how we envision creating cultural moment. You can't just have a big idea. You need to echo it everywhere with consistency. And so it was a lot of late night nights, a lot of Google Docs, a lot of chasing people down to make sure we stayed sharp. But that's the job. And so, you know, we're just, we're trying to build a story and we have to protect it at every touch point. When we do, whether that's external comms, internal franchisee facing comms, it's all going to feel the same.
- [12:26]
Dan Salke
There's, there's two things I just want to jump in on quickly there because I think Dean kind of networked. The whole answer was nailed. But I think there's something in particular that really landed. What, what, what kind of separates entertaining brands from just regular old brands? The first thing that Dean really spoke about was thinking fan first instead of thinking brand first. I think lots of brands have a tendency to, you know, again, think about, oh, we've made the celebrity partnership, let's just make the most of it and everyone really cares about the celebrity and let's plaster that everywhere and make that kind of the lead of the campaign. And everyone's just going to go and buy it, which is not the case. And you could have seen a version of this, you know, Happy Gilmore campaign that looked very, very different if it was just kind of like talent led, Sander led in. This wasn't. This was participatory. And we could talk about all the ways that it is participatory, but it really invites people in to kind of, yeah, again, have their own version of a Happy Gilmore meal. Have their own version of being in the Happy Gilmore world. Something that was, yeah, perfect. And those are the types of brands, whether you look at like Duolingo or you look at Liquid Death, they. They do tend to do that really well. They're very fan first and they understand what fan wants. Fans want. And then the second thing was that point that you made there about across every single touch point. The very best entertainment brands adopt this lots of littles mentality. So instead of having one big campaign moment, they understand that in the Internet algorithmic driven world that we are today, it's almost like an Internet casino. Every single time you put out a campaign, it has a kind of equal chance survival rate, as if you put kind of a million dollars into it. The same if you put $100,000 into it. The Internet is ultimately this world's greatest democracy. And yes, while you can pay for reach and you can pay for eyeballs, you can't pay for engagement. And that's really the crux of what's going to make something successful or not. You can build a system, either one creative campaign that has lots of different touch points that are like lots of little different creative ideas and increase the chance that someone engages with it in a different place. Great. Or if you can, build a system where you can create lots of mini campaign ideas. So again, brands at Liquid Death and Duolingo do this really well. You see Them have these kind of mini campaign moments across a year, rather than one big like super bowl moment, for instance, you're increasing your chance of kind of winning the Internet and winning maximum minutes on the Internet.
- [14:38]
Daniel Murray
Yeah. And I, I mean I will like piggyback on the, the, the, the, the extra thing you said too, Dean, is like it's not only like those mini touch points is like how the many touch points land in like the tone, the voice, like the story. Because you could put out a lot of mini touch points for. And they, if they don't like tell the same story or don't feel like the Gil Happy Gilmore vibe or like Subway and Happy build more vibe, you're gonna like. That's why I think people like underestimate like, like the top level, like getting that voice and tone and story right before doing these touch points. A lot of people go straight to like touch points and not thinking about like how important is like everybody getting the same voice, tone, story and what before putting all this out.
- [15:31]
Dean Harrison
Totally. And that's why I have a, like a strong messaging hierarchy and a strong interagency team. Kickoff was so important to us as well. I remember we did it on January 27th with a ton of agency partners, a ton of discipline owners as well, and just laid out the key messages for everybody from consumer PR to CRM to push to digital to make sure everything was consistent and, and there was no deviating from that as well because it's not just that we were working with Netflix. We also have to get approvals from the team at Happy Madison who poured their heart and soul into this, this orig film and the second film. So we want to make sure that we're honoring it in a way that makes them proud and it truly does feel like a partnership instead of a one sided kind of brand. First thing, we are, we're, you know, placing our bets in the equity and the halo that this, this film has around it. And we're so excited.
- [16:29]
Daniel Murray
I, I mean, Dan, I want to ask you something. I mean one of the key parts of this campaign is like the collect the collectible moments that people have. And we're, you see it right now like a lot of people are into like collecting things and brands, the brands like Liquid Death and all those brands are trying getting into these collectible moments. Why do you think like collectibles are like just so entertaining and so shareable?
- [17:01]
Dan Salke
Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's, there's, there's two answers to this. The first is what I'D call the Labubu effect, which probably every. Everybody is aware of what a Labubu is by now. My girlfriend is rapidly trying to buy one every single day across the Internet. I think that goes into this. This again, this idea of, like, affordable luxury in a world where we can't maybe afford that designer handbag anymore or that sports car or those more luxury collectibles, things that still have that air of kind of luxury to them or this sense of exclusivity to them now become ever more important. Or other, you know, other people call it kind of like the lipstick effect as well. So I think there's that. But I think in the context of being an entertaining brand, in the context of brands like Liquid Death that you mentioned, Mischief as well, New York in New York, who do like the big red boots and some of the other campaigns that they've released, I think what we're seeing there is brands getting attention by showing effort. In a world where anyone can create a piece of content, it's fantastic that anyone can create a piece of content, but it also means that we don't see as much or we don't value as much. We don't see as much effort go into someone who creates a piece of content. So it's no longer good enough for someone to just create a piece of content. And we really want to see people go the extra mile effectively and actually physically almost creating a piece of 3D comedy, as liquid Death would say, creating something that out there in the world that actually takes your point of view and puts it in a physical object, which is so much harder than filming a tick tock on on your iPhone. Shows and signals effort and makes that thing inherently more shareable. And again, it invites you into the world of this brand as well. It lets you physically own a piece of that brand equity. It lets you kind of participate in. In what that brand is doing. So I think that's one of the. You know, again, we talked about the golf cart. I'm now obsessing over that golf cart and want to. Want to have that golf cart effectively. Whereas if you just did an advert where, you know, Shooter and Happy ride around in the golf cart and have a. Have a friendly spat. It's not really something that inherently I might share with my friend on its own, but when you add this other element of me being able to participate, you add this other element of effort that we're seeing in these kind of collectibles and pieces of 3D comedy, it just takes it one step further. So yeah, with all of our clients we're always trying to implore them to show that go that extreme on and show effort. I mean some brands are even building that directly into their products. So Vacation Inc. For instance, which is a Miami based brand and a small world client, their products themselves are inherently these pieces of 3D comedy. They have, you know, whipped cream, sunscreen for instance, which is, you know, it doesn't need a TikTok hook because it is the hook itself. And yeah, I think that makes it inherently entertaining and shareable.
- [19:32]
Daniel Murray
Dean, I want, I want to ask you one question too and I'll let you go talk about it but I like one thing I want to know is like for like the audience, like how does like a big brand like Subway like sync these like offline experiences and like get make sure that like everything like creative paid, like these collectibles in re, like in store moments are all sync because I mean that's like a lot of moving parts from like working with a creative team to working with retail, with working with I mean a good agency. Like what does that look like behind the scenes?
- [20:12]
Dean Harrison
That's a really great question. I guess in terms of the cops too. We wanted to make sure that we were building a solid foundation first and looking at as much data as we could. So we worked really closely to Dan's point with our incredible consumer insights team at Subway. And we tested everything, and I mean everything. We looked at anticipation and sentiment for the SQL, we tested different self liquidating offers. So that is what in QSR our cup is called an slo. We study how quickly people plan to watch the film after it dropped. We learned about super fandoms, we tracked social listening, etc. And so we did find in consumer testing that this cup is what people crave the most. We tried plushies, collectible cards, a bunch of other things, but this really was by far our most exciting offer to our targeted or our test audience. And then in terms of your comments on creating things, what we didn't want was to create things just for shock value. We wanted to create things that really did honor the original film and weren't just, you know, something that no one would use in their daily lives, especially cross referencing our film audiences as well. So we made sure that when our merch line does come out very shortly, there are things that the film audiences would really want. It's not going to be a shock or an omg, it's going to be like oh that's cool, I want that. But it's so difficult for us to sync everything and to scale it. I touched on it a bit earlier as well. And there's just so many interagency team partners, so many agencies, so many custodians of the title, from Netflix to Happy Medicine to the creative teams. And it is very, very difficult. It has been over a year in the making to make all of this. We have processes, a strong creative tracker, but leading the IAT at Subway was a lot. It was a big job to make sure that we were A, activating on all of our different disciplines, but B, activating in a way that we know all of those things would get approved by the teams involved. So it definitely wasn't easy. And then you add in for the first time since I've known about Subway, where we did a North American collaboration. So that was also tricky is syncing up the Canadian team with the US team, making sure that the promotion was working in a way that it needed to, to drive business traffic and, you know, sales across both markets and the creative with land in both markets and even in, in Quebec or French Canada too. So that was definitely a challenge. Not, not, not something that I, I need a little bit of a vacation from.
- [23:03]
Daniel Murray
I have to admit, I think also what's really cool, I mean, I think when brands do this well is like when the collectible and like the rewards, like, align with like the actual movie itself, like the golf cart, like the resort, golf resort. Like, like it's aligning with like, what the movie actually does. And it's going to bring the fans that are like, like the fans who are watching the movie are the ones who are probably like, also like golfer, like, are interested in the golf. So it's like aligning those two rewards make it feel like more of the story than just having like, you could have just said you win a million dollars or like, like something like you could have made a. A simple like cash prizes. But you went deep into like, also, like connecting the prizes with the, the. The movie.
- [23:55]
Dean Harrison
Totally.
- [23:55]
Dan Salke
Yeah.
- [23:56]
Dean Harrison
I always think about it as like, like date and marry. Like, like maybe you're interested in a little bit. Date is like, oh, I'm going to engage with that social post. It's entertaining, it's providing value. But the Mary is like, I'm going to spend additional money on a piece of merchandise because that's how invested I am in this partnership or this promotion. And so I'm interested. This is the first film promotion we've done at subway in nine years, since 2016, and it'll be interesting to see how fast those pieces of merchandise sell out and how quickly those super fandoms, as you mentioned, want to accelerate from like to marry and you know, put money behind that as well. So we'll see.
- [24:37]
Dan Salke
It's the brilliance of framing, isn't it? Like that's, you know, it's inherently more shareable, ironically to say, you know, instead of here's a million dollars like Mr. B star, right? You can have a million dollars or you can have a private island, right? And it's like the private island maybe cost 700 grand and costs a little bit, bit less than the million dollars, but that private island in your head suddenly feels like it's worth a billion dollars, right? It's all about the framing in the context of who you're actually offering that prize to, as you said, and in this case it's fans of the film. That golf cart is far less than a million dollars, but it automatically feels like a better prize just because of the. Yeah, money can't buy us of it almost.
- [25:13]
Daniel Murray
Yeah. And yeah, I mean like when you think you're like 6,000 or $10,000 for a golf cart, like you're not like thinking like, like oh, I'm winning a ten thousand dollar golf card, you're like thinking like, oh, I can win a golf cart. Like it's, you don't think of like the monetary value when it's like, especially when you're connecting it to that. And I want to go into a little a deeper side. I mean like, like basically like Scooter and Happy from the BIM are like the, the brand characters here. So I'm gonna ask it for Dan, like is there like a resurgence happening when it comes to like brand characters? And why do you think if so, why?
- [25:54]
Dan Salke
Yeah, I mean, I 100 believe that. And I mean there's some high profile examples like Duolingo or even brands in the QSR category. For instance, like McDonald's are bringing back a lot of their brand mascots from the archive, actually, which is both nostalgia and brand character. But I think we had, I almost feel like marketing got quite self serious through the kind of purpose era, through the early 2000s and into maybe like the mid, you know, mid 2015, etc. Then we had the kind of end of this purpose era and then we saw kind of a, particularly in America, we saw this return to a sort of more absurd, silly, you know, escapist form of marketing. And in that world, brand characters are super important. And there's actually tons of research that shows that brand characters are far more effective at driving brand awareness and brand salience than, you know, celebrities, for instance, that you might use. So even though in this instance, you know, yes, Adam Sandler is a celebrity, his character of Happy is more of a mascot, if you will. And because there's already this sort of credit built up in people's head about his association with Subway from the original film, it doesn't feel like it's kind of like a cash grab or inauthentic. It feels like it's kind of true to that. It works really well and it makes a lot of sense, and it works as a really great kind of temporary brand asset for Subway, if you will. So, yeah, it's very cool. Clever.
- [27:15]
Daniel Murray
Yeah. And I think, I mean it also. I mean, you talked about this earlier about it, like, tapping into, like, fandoms and fan first, and I like those. I mean, they are fans of Happy and fans of Scooter. And, like, in this case, Dean, you made Scooter like the. The villain of, like, the. The. The. The world. And you could talk a little bit about that, but, like, like, through your, like, research, you probably like saying, like, like people, like when you. All these people who dressed up as Happy Gilmore, like, people still thinking about Happy Gilmore now, like, when the film, like, got launched again, like, like that they were remaking this film, you probably saw, like, people wanted to see Happy succeed again. You probably wanted, like, people now are excited about Happy. So, like, could you go a little bit of, like, who came up with. With, like, making Scooter the villain in the story?
- [28:09]
Dean Harrison
Sure. So shooter McGavin. Shooter.
- [28:12]
Daniel Murray
Shooter.
- [28:13]
Dean Harrison
Shooter.
- [28:14]
Daniel Murray
Remember, Shooter likes it hot.
- [28:16]
Dean Harrison
Yeah. Well, it's been 30 years.
- [28:18]
Daniel Murray
So bad. Yeah, 30 years. I mean, exactly.
- [28:21]
Dean Harrison
I don't blame you. But the genius behind, you know, bringing Shooter McGavin back as the jealous villain, you know, there is one person really responsible for that, and her name is Shadara. She's a brilliant creative partner at Netflix. And so she came up with this idea. And honestly, it's everyone's favorite idea, plays into the entire campaign. But Shooter's energy, and people remember this energy, even 30 years later, is just so right. He's like, he's petty, he's competitive, he's a little unhinged. And. And now, without even knowing it, he's becoming our official unofficial spokesperson. So Shooter wants less Happy Always Place, and Subway wants to give you more. And that tension, it's hilarious. It brings the whole extra layer of fun to the campaign and a shout out, you know, to our partners at Dentsu who really dialed up the storytelling and made sure that the creative landed across every channel in the way that it needed to to feel cohesive and smart, but platform specific. But it's playful, it's, it's self aware. And honestly, it's really fun to root against Shooter again. We've used Christopher McDonald, Shooter McGavin in our commercials for Social. We did a line of ads for Social specifically, and then we also did above the line as well. And he's just such an incredible human being. We just had a media event in New York two days ago with him and stayed to the very end. Just an incredible person to work with. And I think the fandom and his villain like Lore are still holding true, even 30 years later later. And he still looks the same too. He still looks great.
- [30:02]
Dan Salke
I'm jealous.
- [30:03]
Daniel Murray
I am so mad I messed up his name. It's just, this is like hurting my heart. But I also want to talk about, I mean, we talk about brand, like brand characters, but you also made collabs with like Mountain Dew and Doritos. So how did you make. Make that weave into the story as well?
- [30:27]
Dean Harrison
H. That's a, that's a good question. So it's tricky. So we have an amazing relationship with our partners at PepsiCo and they provide our beverages and our drinks across the country. And it's really kicking off this summer, 100%. So, you know, they, they played a really fun role in the campaign by sponsoring Subway's Happy Place, which is our digital hub. We're fans, you know, as we talked about, can win a million dollars in stuff with cash or epic prizes when we work closely with them at Pepsi Frito Lay to make sure that their involvement is added real value for our guests. It wasn't about cramming in extra brands. It was about creating bigger, better rewards that made the whole experience more exciting. Fan first, as Dan had mentioned as well, in a way that really respected our proprietary partnership with Netflix as well as the film. So hopefully we did everybody justice. But the folks at Mountain Dew have been incredible to work with. Incredible partners. We've partnered with them early in the year on Doritos Foot Long Nachos, which were a big success for us as well, and, and a bunch of more things to come. So when we thought about partners, they're our number one partner for sure. And we wanted to see how we could bring them along for the ride as well, because they always do the same for, for us.
- [31:49]
Daniel Murray
Dan, I also want to go to you. I mean, we, we talked a little Bit about like fandoms. Like, why do you think it's so important to have fandoms in like the fast food space? I mean, we've seen McDonald's do great work with us lately as well as Subway's doing great work with us lately. So why do you think it's so important to activate fandoms?
- [32:12]
Dan Salke
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I, I think it's important for, for any brand to do that. But particularly high, high interest brands or high interest categories, which I would say food in general is, but in particular, in particular fast food, you know that they're categories where you really do need to stand out because there are lots of competitors who are marketing in that space and they're all pretty competent and good at marketing themselves as well. So in the modern day today, when you are trying to not act like an advertiser but act like an entertainer, then you really need to understand what people are fans of effectively. Because as we spoke about earlier newsflash, they aren't necessarily fans of your brand or your product inherently. I think again, a really good example of that is if you look at the likes of a Duolingo, a language learning app, or Liquid Death canned water. Neither of those products. I think anyone would wake up in the morning and be like, I'm a massive fan of canned water and I sit down and watch a TV show about a can of water. Although they could have, might change that in the future. But what they are fans of are Game of Thrones, Squid Games, Happy Gilmore and even kind of other smaller niche interest groups. So what savvy brands are doing is they're understanding, well, we want to piggyb effectively off the fame of some of those niches and the very best ones aren't just saying, well, we're going to do like again, a quick cash grab, a sponsorship of a show or like an ident. They're saying, well, how do we actually participate in these fandoms? How do we add value to them? How do we turn up in the spaces where these fandoms are happening both digitally and in the real world? And how do we actually do something that doesn't make us feel like kind of a sore thumb sticking out there and almost like if you've seen that meme of Steve Buscemi where he's like hi fellow kids and he kind of rocks up, how do we not going to be seen as a sort of cringe sort of brand in the room, but actually just be like cool, here's the tools for you to play within this fandom, you know, we've got the cash, we've got the ideas, and we're kind of offering that up to you. So, again, yeah, the likes of Subway, likes of Duolingo, they're the ones who are doing really well in the space of fandom. And I think just we might touch on it at the very end. But one thing that you can do today, if you're like, well, I don't know what fandoms my audience group are interested in, you can do something called fandom mapping. And maybe again, we'll touch on that just before the end. But it's a really simple, fun first research tops, basically, that you can do to understand what people that are interested in or are followers of your brand, what their fandoms might be.
- [34:34]
Dean Harrison
That's amazing.
- [34:34]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I think that. And I was. Yeah. You want to go and piggyback?
- [34:38]
Dean Harrison
Oh, sure. I was just gonna say Dan and I met at Possible in Miami a couple months back, and we were so intrigued by this concept from a social first perspective of branded entertainment with small worlds and the incredible work that they do. And so we've worked together off and on for the last couple months, mapping out some fandoms for Subway, looking at our branded entertainment score, seeing where we can do better, how we track against other competitors within the QSR space. So I'm really interested, to Dan's point, to see maybe how Happy Gilmore and this work might change that. I mean, I think we're doing okay, but there were definitely opportunities that Daniel and his team had mapped out through those fandoms and through Brandon Entertainment scores where we could excel in or do better in, and hopefully we will with this campaign. But I think that the fandoms that they identified for us a couple months back were super helpful to understand where we could win, what kind of content would resonate, and even to, like, how we adapt the central ethos of the, let's say, the comedy to different targets and different audiences, like, to tap into zillennials or, you know, Gen Z on Tik Tok versus an older audience on Facebook who might have more nostalgia with the film. Super important to us. So the fandoms really did help guide a lot of the work that we did.
- [36:03]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I'll go deeper than that. I mean, because, like, Happy Gilmore is like, example of a fandom, but, like, it had a land in, like, a culturally relevant moment, which is. Is, like the movie coming out, because if you, like, launch the fandom at the wrong time, like, you might. This might not have Hit as well. But like aligning like you know, people are going to talk about Happy Gilmore when the movie comes out, there's going to be word of mouth and then your brand is showing up on all these other channels. Social, retail, all over ads that's organic, that makes a lot of sense. But also like I bet you when you map these out, there's also like some evergreen fandoms too, right? Like there's like fandoms that you are like people are fans of every single day. Like, like deeper fandoms that would connect with Subway fans. So what are the like going deeper into like fandoms. What does that fandom mapping look like? Like since you talked about like, let's go a little deeper into that.
- [37:09]
Dan Salke
Yeah. So again this process of fandom mapping is again something that perhaps I've coined and I've put over the top of it, but it's really, it's fundamentally good research and doing good research with, with your customers. Again, McDonald's, Wieden and Kennedy's famously written a really great article that you can probably find online all about how they approach the process and how they, they did a combination of qual and social listening and McDonald's basically in each of the 50 states within the US and kind of understood how people like to eat their McDonald's. But then equally kind of what they were doing around that experience of getting a McDonald's, were they going back to their house and jumping on headset with their friends to play Call of Duty or Fortnite, Were they you know, watching a sports, a sports match with it? Were they grabbing it? Because they're at like an anime conference in between and they've done lots of different activations that have touched on all of those different things. And I think, think we would basically help clients do the same thing. So we would start with obviously customers themselves and whatever access we can get to customers to talk about that. And then we do a piece of social listening effectively and we've actually got our own tool that we've now built to do this. Thanks to the wonders of AI, it's made things like simpletons like me be able to do things with kind of like no code tools that can make these things easier. But effectively what you're doing is as I said, looking at, at followers of your brand and then understanding and mapping out what they also follow and, and, and understanding the kind of top priority connections amongst that. So there might be a particular thing on social that tends to be trending amongst that particular audience. They tend to be following. Whether again it be like anime or whether it be horror films or whether it be a particular celebrity like Taylor Swift for instance, and kind of a Swifties phenomenon. And from there you can start to piece out what these different fandoms are. Understand you know how niche is too niche and then how you know what those kind of hidden gems are almost what are those ones that perhaps aren't like a massive trend or like a massive fandom that feels almost like too homogeneous. So like for instance, I wouldn't say sport is a. When we're doing fandom mapping, sport isn't a fandom that's way too big. In the same way, like, I wouldn't say gaming is a fandom that's literally like saying, you know, every sport, again, you want to go a little bit more detailed than that, I suppose, and then pick out kind of more specific examples. But then equally you don't want to go super, super niche where again it feels like something that' maybe more of a trend or a hashtag. Like when that story about whether 100 men can beat one gorilla in a fight. I wouldn't call that a fandom. I'd call that a trend, for instance. So there is a, there is kind of like a balancing act, I guess, in terms of what's considered the sweet spot, fandom.
- [39:51]
Daniel Murray
And you probably like looking like, do I want to do like a regional, like fandom mapping? Like, do I want to launch like a regional thing like Miami, like Miami FC with Messi, like do we want to roll it out in Miami? Or do is there like something more Happy Gilmore or something like that where there's a fandom to do like a whole. A whole country.
- [40:15]
Dan Salke
Yeah, no, exactly. And again, it's yes, deciding range and scale. And I mean there's another way of approaching it, as you said there with fandoms where if we took the Happy Gilmore aware of it, which makes it quite contextual to the U.S. but if we're talking about fandom mapping more generally, the fandoms that exist within the UK might be found, might be very different, will be very different to some of the fandoms that exist within the US equally. So yeah, this isn't just a one and done done type of activity. This is something that you need to kind of refresh on an ongoing basis. Just as you'd refresh your marketing plan kind of each year and you know, tweak your, tweak your segments or tweak your targeting. None of this flies in the face of like traditional marketing Science, I would say.
- [40:54]
Daniel Murray
Going back to Dean, like, Happy Gilmore, big moment. Like, where is the next like big space that you see for Subway?
- [41:03]
Dean Harrison
That's a great question. You know, I think for us, Happy Gilmore too. Two isn't the finish line. It's hopefully the launching pad in terms of the way that we ingratiate ourselves into culture and become part of it again. But what we unlocked here is a new way of showing up. It's, it's bolder, it's more playful, it's more culturally connected and it's not a one time thing. Hopefully it will be a blueprint for how Subway moves forward. The white space, I think is about finding more moments where we can live inside culture and not just advertise around it. Whether that's through entertainment or sports or gaming or unexpected collaborations. We're looking for ways to be part of the story in ways that feel real and find our and fun for our guests and authentic for our guests too. So Happy was a huge moment. But what's next is, is building a pipeline of culturally driven partnerships and consumer first experience. Experiences that keep Subway in the spotlight for the right reasons, long after these credits roll. So we're not going back to the sidelines. Not that we were ever but excited to see how this performs again. First time in nine years. It's a new muscle for us. It's a brand new team that had to put this all together. There's no historic knowledge inside these walls. So it's building from scratch. And was kind of one of the architects behind it, leading the way, leading the I. And I don't want to lose that muscle memory because it took so long to kind of figure out and now we have the blueprints and hopefully be a hoe in one for our guests. Pun intended.
- [42:43]
Daniel Murray
I also think it's cool to hear like big brands like Subway like are still like having to like flex new muscles and like try new things and like have like this is felt uncomfortable for a brand new brand. But like big brands like Subway are doing uncomfortable things and like small brands could do the same thing. And like it's just like you always in marketing need to start flexing like these muscle like muscles that you have in flex and it is uncomfortable. Like getting to the gym the first time, like doing your first live, it's uncomfortable but once you flex it enough, it becomes part of emotion and something that you could keep in your playbook for a long time. One thing I asked ask everybody in this podcast and I'm going to end it with you and I'll ask both of you is what is a marketing hill that you would die on?
- [43:32]
Dan Salke
Oh, that's a great question. I think I have mine. Dean, do you have yours?
- [43:37]
Dean Harrison
I think I have two, but you go first. I gotta think about this.
- [43:40]
Dan Salke
Cool. Mine would be the more boring the category or the more boring the brand, the easier it is to do entertaining creative work.
- [43:49]
Dean Harrison
Oh I like that. I would say mine would be the future is social first. It's leveraging social media for consumer insights and I think that will be the pipeline to guide innovation, the pipeline to guide above the line work, et cetera. But I don't think that there's ever been a moment where for big companies and small companies alike that social is really looked upon as the front and center. For so long it was just an afterthought. Like you do an above the line television commercial, then you play plop. Those cuts onto social to Dan's point and what he's built this company on is, is that that's the work, right? People audiences aren't the same. They get sick and tired of that stuff. So I think the hill that I would die on is like social's the future. I know everyone knows that of course. But I think it's also the future for understanding key business decisions, traffic patterns, consumer behaviors and what people. How people want to engage with people, your brand and be entertained. Essentially 100.
- [44:55]
Dan Salke
It's. It's the world's greatest democracy.
- [44:57]
Daniel Murray
Those are the both great answers. I mean one like Dan, like obviously you. You're seeing this with like Dr. Squatch like getting acquired. Like you see it with soda. Brands that were like, like, like soda was like kind of like a, A non like fun cat. It was like a fun category but it wasn't like like someone who came up with bold creative using creators, modern marketing first they, they. They've t. And you see all these boring like categories that they just put a. A fun character or a fun spin to it and like it's a fun. It's like you. If you go to your shelves and you see there's probably so many brand like categories that need to be disrupted, which is crazy to see with a little entertainment Shout out.
- [45:42]
Dan Salke
Dr. Squatch, by the way, another small client.
- [45:44]
Daniel Murray
Amazing. And then Dean, I mean I love, I love your. I mean I do. I, I mean I still, it still blows my mind how people aren't like thinking social first. Like it's still, it's still like even today where social is like the biggest consumption channels out there. Brands are still under investing in social which is the craziest thing to me.
- [46:09]
Dean Harrison
And they're also, I think, I think I'm biased though KPI in the wrong things too. Like different behaviors like engagement rates, do those really matter as much on like a platform like TikTok where views are king. Like I think you know, understanding too that social first but also you have to, you know, measure the right things. And I think that's what a lot of brands are maybe not focused on right now either. So that's something that we do need to get better at over here too. And I'm responsible for that. So I am quickly whipping myself into shape as well. But what I think is fun is like I just was doing a quick brand watch study yesterday and 98% of people who look at our on the subway TikTok accounts are not our followers. So how do we tap into that unmarked or unchartered territory as well? Like we're so good at creating content for our followers but if our followers aren't the only ones watching it, how do we tap into them as well and KPI the right things. So we're creating the right kind of content content which should be views and then you know, optimizing creative against that. So I think there's lots of opportunities and I've learned a lot from Dan.
- [47:21]
Daniel Murray
I think this is cool. We're in an area where, where like 98% of your non followers like can like see content that's like a cool like, like, like five years ago it's like follower count was like king and yeah, if you didn't have followers like it was hard to be seen. Now it's like you could put a post out there and anybody who's interested in that content could see it.
- [47:46]
Dean Harrison
That's why you know, video content is so important for us because we can use depending on licensing and music. Like the same piece of content on TikTok and IG Reels and IG Reels is a bit different with algorithms. So we have the opportunity to have more people who just don't follow us see it and hopefully engage page. But seeing it is number one 100.
- [48:09]
Dan Salke
I think it goes back to that thing that we talked about about lots of littles, right. People have become so obsessed with the feed because of, because of follow account and they become obsessed with kind of posting at all costs or you know, hygiene posts which is one of the most horrible terms to ever exist in, in social media. But the brands that are really doing well are the ones that recognize that it's not actually about that. It's almost like each again each piece of content you're putting out there is like a new bet on the brand. And yes, you want to have consistency and you want formats that people as a brand but within that you have the opportunity to be disruptive every single piece of content and treat them almost like their own. Like mini campaigns and not just put something out at all costs. Put something out that you feel is like a minimum viable creative product.
- [48:51]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I mean I always say like you like every post is someone's first time seeing a piece of content of yours. So like are you really want to introduce your brand with like something that is like just put out there like and just like check the box. Like you want to have some sort of piece of content that is going to show. And even like most people you think are viewing your brand don't remember that post that you posted three days ago. So like you're like continually having to like put out new things that people to keep you people remembering that you even exist. That is great. Not like high quality. Otherwise people are just like an impression. The cost of like an impression is like, doesn't mean is is not necessarily like an intent, an attention of your brand. Like that's what people are like mistake too.
- [49:44]
Dan Salke
Yeah.
- [49:44]
Dean Harrison
So it's interesting for, for a brand like Subway, like we don't have an awareness problem. Everyone knows who Subway is. So what is our challenge on social or what is our challenge within our entire marketing ecosystem and its relevancy? How do we make or convince people that Subway is a brand for someone like you again? Or remind them of our reasons to believe our quality cues, our freshness, our nods, our branded entertainment. So it's interesting to see how you know, new or upcoming or smaller scale brands, you know, have different objectives or different challenges that social console for them too. And then a big brand like us, we need to do different kind of work, different kind of content or think about fandoms in different ways to really drive home that you know about Subway. But just now come back to Subway. And so that's really our challenge and our exciting next steps. And I think this happy Gilmore 2 promotion with Netflix coming out on July 25th will be, you know, the, the most exciting kind of case study to see what happens.
- [50:52]
Daniel Murray
I think that's a great point. I think like you got to see where you are in your brain. Like, like do you have like a, a brand problem in general? Like do people not know you or do you have like do you Is your goal relevancy like this? Each brand has different things. Like, are you trying to get back into the conversation? Are you trying to like, you get people to even know you're part of the conversation, conversation in general. So it's like you always have to like going back to like KPIs and goals. Like that's like Subway going off of like, hey, we need. Relevancy is more important. Like we need to be like remembered, keep being remembered that we are like still in this conversation, which Subway still is. But like you still have to keep reminding people because Subway's been around for years and years where like new sand. You're also competing against those like smaller sandwich brands that are trying to get into like the world as well. But lastly, where could people find both of you, like, if they wanted to like follow, reach out, anything like that?
- [51:57]
Dan Salke
Yeah, I can jump in first quickly. Yeah, if, if you want to, want to find me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Dan Salke. My surname is pronounced S A L K E Y. You can find our website at www.meetsma world.com M E tmeatsmallworld.com and then yeah, if anyone actually wants to just found any of this interesting and wants to just reach out direct, I'm on dan, meet small world.com so just, just kind of hit me up. I'm sure we'll put lots of that in the show notes.
- [52:28]
Dean Harrison
Cool. And so Dean, I'm on LinkedIn. So Dean Harrison, Double R. If anyone watches, wants to reach out or learn how to make a sub, I am there or has any questions, that'd be great.
- [52:44]
Daniel Murray
Thank you so much for joining. This has been like really cool and I'm excited. One for the movie and two to get remember that shooter is his name not scooter.
- [52:56]
Dean Harrison
Well, July 25th, you won't make the mistake again.
- [53:00]
Daniel Murray
No, I definitely will not. I'm excited to see the movie. So thank you both for coming on.
- [53:04]
Dan Salke
No worries. Thanks a lot.
- [53:06]
Dean Harrison
Thank you for having me.
- [53:09]
Daniel Murray
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.