Hello, I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, and I am with my co-host, Jackie Brugliera, Director of Marketing and co-host of Taste Radio.
Hi, Jackie.
Hey, Melissa.
How are things going over there on the West Coast?
They're good.
I have a lot of the East Coast over here in our office.
We're currently preparing for our meetup tomorrow in San Diego, so a lot of tidying up of the office, getting things ready for samples and networking.
Really excited to see a lot of people IRL here in SoCal.
Very exciting.
We certainly want to put our best face forward, so I'm sure everybody's neatening up their desks and rearranging the beverage fridge.
Yes.
And we are also having a meetup here in the Newton headquarters.
That's gonna be on October 4th, but for folks who may be listening right now and these meetups have passed, what do we have for them?
It's kind of sad.
I know.
It's sad that you couldn't join us in our offices, but we have something even better for you.
In Marina Del Rey, California, in November and December, we'll be hosting NOSH Live and BevNET Live.
And NOSH Live is geared towards natural packaged food brands.
It's two days of strategic conversations, networking, sampling the latest innovations in food.
And we also have retail one-to-one meetings.
So we do have buyers from Foxtrot, Proger and Thrive Market that will be there taking meetings with brands.
And then we also have BevNET Live, which is on December 4th and 5th, and that is geared towards beverage brands.
It's such a great opportunity for founders to meet each other and connect with each other.
But it really is also such a great opportunity for founders to chat with retailers, investors.
You just rattled off some really impressive retailers that do great business with the folks in our community.
And unlike, say, being at Expo West where you're trying to chase someone down while they're in between meetings, it really is a cozier group, and you can have lengthier, more meaningful conversations with those folks and everybody else.
Yeah, it allows for time.
You can set up meetings while you're there.
You'll have time to sit down and actually take a breather and think about your business strategically and start planning for 2024.
I mean, you've already been planning for 2024, but refine your 2024 strategy.
And if you are interested, you want to learn more, just head to bevnet.com/events, and you can find all of our upcoming conferences.
If we're going to be talking about community, I also certainly want to remind folks to join our upcoming Community Calls by going to bevnet.com/communitycall.
Joining these on Zoom is such a great way to ask your own questions, to add to the conversation.
We absolutely want to hear from you, and it's so great to have the video component there as well.
So please do join us on Zoom.
But of course, if you're unable to join us on Zoom, we now have all of the Community Calls coming out in a podcast format.
I know, this is episode four, and there's a ton more to come that's already pre-recorded, so just wait.
So this is episode four of Community Call, the podcast.
It's a great one.
We've got Sara Brooks, who was previously the founder and CEO of Covet PR.
She sold that to Power Digital, and now she is the co-founder of the Goldilocks Consultancy, helping folks understand how to chase down that earned PR.
She gave some really great, actionable advice for brands of all stages, you know, whether you're an early stage brand, which often PR can be kind of intimidating, it seems expensive, to all the way to an established brand.
There's different ways that you can get in front of editors that are crafty and, you know, scrappy.
And then you can obviously partner with a PR agency or a influencer marketing agency.
But for the startup brands, there's just so many other channels now that you can use through social media to reach the person that you want to reach and to give them your pitch.
Sara told a great story that really is a case study on how to chase down some of that earned PR.
She talked about a client she had who figured out how to pitch Florence Fabricant at the New York Times and got her story covered within six days.
So certainly not something that happens all the time, but she tells us exactly how to do it.
And, you know, personally, I'm someone who's been around for, you know, a few years or so, and I was really happy to hear that some of the traditional media outlets like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, they're still important and meaningful places to have your story told.
And she really does break down how to chase down those writers and how to get your information across in a way that may be published on your own.
Yeah, I think a lot of the change has been good, especially for startups.
It just increases access and channels for them that they might have not had access to prior.
And they can leverage that, and they can leverage social media and influencers and really spread awareness about their brand.
She also talks about how to get in the social media game the right way because, as we all know, it's got to be, I don't know, I don't want to use the A word, but it's going to come off as being authentic.
So she gives us some really practical tips on how to get content that really resonates with people and doesn't seem forced or fake.
And she says that everybody does, in fact, have to be on TikTok.
I know that there may be some groans out there in the CPG landscape, but it does sound like you need to be there, but she tells us how to do it.
Just test the waters, throw something on TikTok, get started.
It's a testing ground for content.
And now that they have the new shopping feature, it's just going to be a great way in the future to drive additional revenue.
Have you bought anything on the TikTok shop yet?
Not yet.
We actually talked on Taste Radio about how the algorithm still seems to be figuring things out.
Like they were targeting me with a beard trimmer.
So I don't think it's quite right.
But I think once they do lock it down like Instagram, I think it will be a great tool.
Well, I am certainly a sucker for the Instagram shopping.
I feel like it's the next generation of as seen on TV.
Like I always wondered whoever bought the stuff that was as seen on TV.
But here I am at 1130 at night, buying all kinds of stuff on Instagram, so.
And that will be Gen Z on TikTok.
That's right.
We also got some great questions from the audience.
Alex Brooks from Improv Booze Free Cocktails asked for a recommended budget for content creation and management.
And again, Sara really broke it down.
Again, there's no one size fits all, but she gave us numbers, which was super helpful.
And he also asked a great question about if an influencer partner is an investor, what are the FTC guidelines?
So with that, I would like to present to everybody episode four of Community Call, the podcast.
Enjoy.
Do you have a recent product launch, new hire, marketing campaign, distribution news, or some other exciting company announcement?
Let us know.
With our new self-service PR portal, submitting your news is easier than ever.
Just head to submit.bevnet.com to get started.
Hello, and thank you so much for joining us today.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, welcoming you to Community Call.
Today, we're going to be talking about earned PR with expert co-host, Sara Brooks, how to pitch it, how to secure PR, and how to translate that exposure into building your brand, customer account, and sales, of course.
Please join in the conversation.
We'd love to hear what you've been doing to try to get PR, what's working, what's not.
Happy to have all of the discussion here on this call.
And we are so thrilled to have you here.
Sara is the co-founder of Goldilocks, a consultancy launched earlier this year.
Previously, Sara was the founder and head of Covet PR, a PR firm leader in CPG.
And then, Sara, before that, you have a lengthy agency and media background.
So certainly, you are exactly the right person to be here talking to us about all of this.
Sara, how is Goldilocks going?
I assume it's keeping you very busy.
Well, first, thanks so much.
I'm obviously a huge fan of BevNET & NOSH.
You guys have been friends of mine and friends of so many of my clients for years.
So it's really exciting to be here.
And yeah, I'm busy, busy in the best way.
So I sold Covet PR in 2020 to a fantastic strategic partner called Power Digital, where I stayed on for about a little shy of two years, and then we sold to Private Equity last year.
So I left the PR agency world after almost two decades last year and kind of had a, oh, now what do I do?
And so Goldilocks really was born out of that.
And Goldilocks is really kind of a growth strategy consultancy firm, growth, not in performance-hacking growth, but more so in brand strategy and building a brand that consumers will stay loyal to.
And so my partner, Heather McNeil and I have been at it for about a year or so.
And having a blast, we work with pre-revenue brands all the way up to large global food brands and kind of everything in between.
It's a really fun iteration.
It's really PR adjacent, if you will.
And I think a lot of what I've learned, which we'll talk about today in my first 20 years of the career have been really helpful for this next stage of what I'm doing.
Even before this call started, you and I were talking about how much the PR landscape has changed.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
How has it changed?
And what are some of the most significant changes that have impacted this industry?
Yeah, I think the better question is, how has it not changed?
Because it feels like everything has changed.
And so I think the tenants that have remained the same are, you have to have great relationships because relationships are really the bread and butter of public relations.
You have to be a trend spotter.
You have to be a voracious consumer of media.
But media now, the definition of media is what's changed.
So, when I started in the early 2000s, you had print was king, digital wasn't even really a thing, social media wasn't even existing.
And so what success looked like in the early 2000s was a lot simpler, to be quite honest.
It was a set of 30 to 50 publications.
You had your typical players, you didn't even really have blogs at that point.
And there was a big barrier between the brand and the consumer.
Brands couldn't speak directly to the consumer.
You didn't have Twitter, you didn't have this 24-7 news cycle of being on social media.
So, so much has changed.
And I think another thing that has remained the same is you have to have a great product, you have to have product market fit, you have to be solving a problem for consumers.
There's definitely an element of right time, right place.
I've worked with many brands that were fantastic, but were maybe a year too early.
There's these kind of broad strokes that have stayed the same, but almost everything else honestly has changed.
It's been wild to have this front seat at watching these chefs.
So, so much has changed.
What are the opportunities that are available to brands now?
Like, does it still make sense to be hunting down the reporters for the New York Times and pitching them your stories?
Are we still trying to be one of Oprah's favorite things?
You know, like what, which opportunities are the same?
And then we can talk more after that about what folks should be keeping their eyes on that are different.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, there is still really nothing quite as significant or as impactful as like a front story New York styles feature on a product or Wall Street Journal.
Some of those like legacy players still have a ton of merit and largely because so many other people have shuddered in the recent years in publishing.
And so in a weird sense, because there's fewer legacy players around, those placements I think have tremendous weight still.
And so I tell clients all the time, like PR absolutely matters.
And you could even say it matters more because of what you can do with PR that you couldn't do 20 years ago.
And what I mean by that is if Florence Fabrican, who's a food writer at the New York Times, if she writes a glowing review, you then take that, use that for paid media, see why the New York Times says this is a can't live without product.
And that is way more effective than a brand saying we're the best.
And so in a sense that the reach of PR and what you can do with really solid earned media, you couldn't do.
And so that I would say is better, but I think where it's really tricky right now is that it is harder to get continual ongoing top tier PR due to the changing landscape, due to the rise of affiliate marketing, just kind of these blurred lines between earned, paid and owned.
And so if you're in good hands with someone that understands the holistic picture and how those parts all play and intercept and even some of the politics behind that, PR is a great tool.
Where it's not a great tool is if you think that you can just do this, what we call spray and pray method, where you send out press releases, which I've never really believed in and you blind copy 40 editors and say, can I send you samples?
That didn't really work before, but it certainly does not work today.
Makes perfect sense.
And for those more traditional outlets that you just named, so Wall Street Journal, New York Times, platforms like that, do you need a PR agency in order to communicate with those reporters?
Or if I'm a founder of a brand and I think I might have a shot, can I track them down on Instagram?
How does that work?
Yeah, I have a great relevant story to share.
The short answer is no, you don't need an agency.
Agencies or PR freelancers or consultants, they're incredible because they understand the landscape.
They have a quality set of diverse relationships, kind of the recipe for what you need.
But I have met so many incredible founders that are tenacious, that are scrappy, that are good writers.
And I'll give one in particular.
I spoke to this woman earlier this week.
Her name is Catherine.
She has a brand called A Bean Story.
And she is in her 50s.
She doesn't know the first thing about PR.
I believe her background before was tech, but she has been reading Florence Fabricants column, the front burner in the New York Times for decades.
And so she just kind of had this innate sense.
Okay, this is what this reporter is looking for.
It's pretty easy to find emails these days.
Lots of editors, you click on a story in their byline, and if they don't have it, you can go to Twitter.
You can also Google, what is the email format for Conde Nast?
And it will tell you, first name, underscore, last name.
And she reached out to the Florence Fabricant, and she said, this is my story.
And within six days, she had a feature in the New York Times.
Now that is rare, right?
That's not, that is a dream.
But it's a really good example of how, if you know your audience, and in the sense it would be your editor, and if you know what they like to write about, and if you have their email, and if you write a really captivating subject line, there's a good chance they'll click on it.
Where I think it gets tricky is, if brands really want this omnipresence now, where you see them everywhere, you read about them everywhere, when you don't have that kind of strategy or those relationships, it's hard to really like plan.
But those one-off ad hoc opportunities, I certainly think can be secured without an agency.
Great to know.
So we've talked a little bit about some of the more traditional platforms.
Now let's talk about the rise of social and influencer marketing.
I don't even know where to start.
I mean, I could ask you what the opportunities are and we'll be here until the end of the day.
What are the things that brands need to know about that ecosystem?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And it's an interesting question because it does feel like every week there's a new platform to be on.
I think we all remember early in the 80s and COVID Clubhouse and everyone's like, okay, we need our brand founders on Clubhouse.
Now I don't even know if Clubhouse is still a thing.
And that felt like such a important place to put resources.
And last month we had the rise of threads, which is looking that it can outpace Twitter and brands are coming to me.
Do we need to be on threads?
If so, what is our voice and how is it different from social or from Instagram?
And so I have a lot of empathy for founders and brands right now because there's this idea of FOMO that if you're not there and your competitors are, but what I would say is like, unless you can really do it right and you really understand the audience, it sometimes can backfire.
If you don't have kind of a funny, short-handed tone of voice on threads and you're talking like it's LinkedIn, like that's not gonna work.
And so I think the short answer is there's so many platforms now to be a part of that you need to be there, but you need to have the right person helping you.
And you and I spoke about this little before Melissa, but I'm in my 40s.
I am certainly on TikTok, certainly on these platforms.
I'm interacting, I'm following, I'm engaging, but it's not secondhand to me like what was secondhand to me in my 20s when I was like of that generation.
And I date myself a little bit, but what I mean by that is when I had my agency, I spent every morning for two hours reading the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, because what I truly believed is if you're not so familiar with the format, the writers, the tone, how can you pitch it and be successful?
Now there's 10 billion influencers, there's 30 million platforms.
It's impossible to be an expert at everything.
And so what I tell brands these days, and for anyone listening, this is a very easy hack to do, but you obviously need to be on TikTok.
You need to know what content perform as well.
TikTok is now a starter of trends that then can be used for urban media, for traditional media, if you will.
Find someone, ideally a Gen Zer, ideally someone in college or even, you know, high schooler or right out of college, and put them on payroll and just start to pick their brain.
They live on these platforms.
I have nieces who are 20 and 22.
They don't even have friends' phone numbers because everyone's DMed.
So bizarre.
But these are the people that are gonna start to be like, hey, these eight different influencers I follow are all talking about this, and then you as the brand can take that and you can be a trendsetter.
And so I don't think it's fair or even doable to be a know-it-all in the media landscape today, but what you do need to know is what you need to do, and then you need to find the right team around you to help bring that.
And there's websites like Home From College where you can pay someone not a crazy amount of money, and they can just be your, you can say, hey, go on social for 10 hours, follow these food influencers, give me a report on what are the 10 ingredients they're talking about.
And I can almost guarantee that in a month, that's gonna be what's in the traditional news cycle.
And it's a really easy way to kind of hack the system if you yourself aren't fluent.
That makes perfect sense.
How are brands structuring the portion of their team that's now responsible for PR, social, traditionally that would sort of fall under a marketing umbrella.
So if the, and especially for an emerging brand, how do you recommend emerging brands with founders who are doing a million different things?
Well, I think I'm helping a few brands right now recruit to build their marketing team.
And something that is now just like a ticket to get in, it's not like a nice to have, it's a need to have, is that you really understand the evolution and the dynamics between earned, owned, paid media, and that you really understand the landscape of influencer.
And again, that doesn't mean you are an influencer or you're living and breathing on the platform 24 seven, but you know enough to know what you don't know and then how to build a team around you.
And so I think there certainly are more old school marketers that absolutely bring value, but I think there has to be an honesty if you look at your team and all your team is like, this isn't to be an agent, it's just what you look at and kind of shifting trends and ways of consuming media.
But if you have an older team and they're not opening TikTok right when they wake up and they're not figuring out what these younger Gen Zers are talking about, it's probably likely that you're missing something.
And so then it's just like, how do we build around that team to make up for inefficiencies of what we know we need to do to be a relevant brand in 2023?
We've talked a little bit about how many different opportunities there are as the entire landscape has changed and there are more outlets.
How do you categorize the influencer opportunities?
Is everybody getting paid?
Like when can you just send somebody free product?
That's a great question.
I remember back in the day you would be like, okay, this is our editor list.
This is our influencer list.
We're only gonna go to these influencers if editors don't cover.
We're definitely not gonna pay these influencers because that's just stupid.
And certainly that has shifted.
Every day I get updates, Conde Nast just laid off this people, Hearst just laid off that.
And so your first step is to realize that traditional editors and content creators talent influencers, whatever PC term we want to use these days are equally important.
They're just used in slightly different ways.
I'm a big believer when it comes to influencer relationships that if you can, and this is not rocket science, but the more authentic the relationship, the better the partnership, the better it is for the influencer because their followers don't turn on them and think they're hawking something.
And the better it is for the brand because there's more of this intrinsic, authentic connection.
And so I'm a big believer in doing a wide influencer seating to begin with, to see who naturally gravitates to your product.
This is not paid.
This is you have their address.
Hey, I'm a new brand.
We love to get your feedback, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Those that engage with you, those that even say, hey, I love the product.
I have a few questions about the ingredient panel.
That's your first clue that there's some authenticity there.
And I'd always recommend that before totally jumping straight into a payment program.
That being said, something that is great with more macro influencers is it's built in brand awareness from day one.
But there's a lot of things that come.
There's a lot of things you need to think about before doing that.
But I guess my short answer to you is there's still at the world which you can seed influencers without payment.
And you do that as a strategy to see who naturally is a brand evangelist.
And then you can start to talk about some sort of paid compensation for a partnership.
And how do you categorize those paid opportunities?
Sometimes we'll see that there's a sponsored reel or there's a sponsored post on TikTok.
And then sometimes you see an influencer talking about a brand that you think there must be an agreement in some kind of payment changing hands.
What are the rules there?
And what are the opportunities?
I mean, Meta has very strict rules.
FTC has very strict rules.
It's pretty clear these days, like what you can and can't do.
And if there's any sort of transaction, it has to be disclosed.
You will though see people, I'm actually wearing a Coyote's hat right now.
It's a brand that I advise.
And they send product to Kristin Cavallari, did not pay her.
She just was obsessed with it and posted about it.
And it almost looked like it was a paid partnership because she was talking about it, talking about it with her kids.
They ended up selling a ton of product.
It wasn't.
They just knew that this was a lifestyle that she gravitated towards.
They have great product.
They had a really great celebrity sandbox that was really engaging.
And so you have to disclose, but you will see opportunities where there isn't a disclosure, and hopefully the brand's doing it right.
And that was truly just serendipitous.
And there was just that intrinsic, authentic connection I was just talking about.
The same thing happened with the brand called Choose a Snacks, Eva Longoria is obsessed, and they just kept sending to her.
Typically, what will happen is you'll see this one or two or three times of this like free posting.
Then the brand will reach out and say, hey, we're so thrilled you're a fan.
We'd love to talk to you about something.
And then the agent and the publicist and the manager and the 39 people from Endeavor get on the list.
And then she's pulled out of the conversation and then it becomes a business transaction.
But having that first touch, that one-on-one direct relationship with an influencer celebrity is great because it's before their team gets in.
And listen, I am part of that team.
So I get the team's purpose.
But if you can kind of keep it really simple to begin with and have that, that's a really amazing foundation of which to build from.
And I do want to remind our audience, if you have any questions at all, or if you have any insights on what's been working for you lately, please feel free to throw any of that information in the chat.
We would love to hear from you.
What are some of the most common misconceptions about PR now?
Oh man, you know, there's a famous quote, I think it was Steve Jobs, or was it Steve Jobs?
I think it was Steve Jobs.
If I was down to my last dollar, I'd spend it on PR.
And as a publicist, I actually do not agree with that.
I say no more to brands than I say yes when it comes to like, am I ready for PR?
And it's a fallacy to think that PR is this magic bullet.
And in fact, if you're not doing what we spoke about earlier, which is really leveraging your PR for more of the marketing funnel, it's really hard to measure.
It's always been hard to measure.
Like you're in People Magazine.
If you sell product off the shelves three days ago, was it because you're in People Magazine?
Was it because of something else?
It's really, really hard to have this true measurement.
And so if you're going into PR, thinking this is gonna make me an overnight success, I'm gonna be able to tell my board and my investors for every $1 we spend in PR, we got $10 back, you're barking up the wrong tree.
That's much more like paid media and affiliate marketing.
And some of these channels where you can work closely track.
So number one, I think it's just being honest.
Like what are your reasons for PR?
And if PR is part of a holistic marketing strategy where you have affiliate turned on, where you have paid media, where you have surge, where you have SEO, PR is amazing, but PR will die in a silo if it's not nurtured.
It's kind of like a plant.
It needs soil, it needs water, it needs light.
These are all the things that make PR effective.
And so brands, one, need to think that.
Number two, you have to think obviously about spend.
So when you're hiring PR, you're hiring a practitioner, whether it's an agency or a solo person, that's kind of the management fee.
Then there's dollars that you should be prepared to invest outside of that for media mailers, for PR stunts, for award submissions, for panels, all those things are incremental spend.
And so when you look at a marketing budget, the rule of thumb is like 15 to 20% largely is what people agree on as much you should spend on marketing.
So if you can't spend that on marketing holistically, let alone, and it carves them out for PR, you may be too early for PR.
And that's where it's a great time to come back to what we're spiking about, which is being scrappy and using your resources.
And I mean, it's a 24 seven world now.
And so there's certainly are ways to get it without having to spend if the time is not right.
When you say too early for PR, you're still assuming that the founder or somebody at the brand is communicating with people on social media, reaching out, building relationships so that when it is time to spend money, then some of those relationships are intact.
Is that right?
To a degree.
I think that there's certainly the sweet spot pre-revenue, pre-launch where if you're too far ahead, it feels too ethereal.
It's like there's no product.
I can't taste it.
I can't see it.
I can't buy it.
Sure, the concept sounds cool.
Sure, you've raised $20 million, but like, what is this?
And you may lose interest and you may burn those bridges.
And then there's too quick where it's like editors haven't had time to really think about it, play around with it.
So what I tell clients is it certainly, there's dependence on what your product is.
If you're a food tech brand and you are gonna take three years to launch, you definitely wanna start those conversations well in advance because you may wanna do fundraising.
You may wanna be thought of as a thought leader in the space on food tech.
And when you look at some brands now in the space, even a year before launch, they're in the new cycle, but it certainly is a balance.
And I always told my team, it's like what you tell a kid, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it.
Same thing with publicists.
If you don't have anything interesting at all, don't say it.
Certainly there's building relationships, but it's hard after two or three email exchanges to build a relationship with someone you don't know when you don't have something for them to test or try or react to.
So this is where like EQ comes in.
What is not stalkery?
What is not weird?
A great way to develop relationships with editors, if you are in that moment, is be their eyes and ears.
So if you know that this editor at the Wall Street Journal works on consumer trends and you hope one day she's gonna write about your product because it's solving a need for consumers, but you're not there yet, and you're sitting around with your girlfriends and six of them are talking about the same kind of weird topic, and you're like, that is kind of a trend that hasn't been covered.
Email the editor and say, hey, I know this is what you covered.
Not sure if this is relevant, but this popped up last night at the dinner table and I wanted to share.
When you add value and you help them do their job, they're that much more likely to wanna help you when you have something to write about.
And what are some of those interesting topics right now?
Are there particular trends or subjects of interest that you're finding really are capturing the attention of the folks that we're trying to get attention from?
Yeah, it's a great question.
And I mean, it's funny, it changes daily.
Like if you think about it, two weeks ago, I had multiple clients be like, should we do something with girl dinner?
Because this idea of girl dinner was trending, right?
And then Popeye did something and they hopped on it so quickly.
By the time brands were kind of getting around to figure it out, you were a little too late.
And that's where it goes back to like having eyes and ears on Twitter and TikTok and some of these, because these are where so many trends get created.
Whether it's like a meal hack, whether it's a trending ingredient, whether it's completely new category.
And I, again, talking about empathy for brands, if you're a really big brand that has a lot of like approval processes and a lot of people giving opinions, that will kill a brand today.
If you can't be nimble and move fast, there's nothing worse for a brand where you see like a press release go out on the wire, two months after a trend went live.
I just want to cry for the brand.
I was like, this is doing so much more damage to you.
And so I think it just goes back to like, I could tell you, you know, yesterday, these were the 10 trends today.
Five of them may be out.
Two brands may have already done something.
So many clients are asking me, should we do food merchandise?
Like, should we, or like Athleisure, that's like a food brand.
You're seeing the Rheos of the world.
You're seeing the Van Lewins.
Super cool, but now like 50 brands have done it.
If you're the 51st brand, editors are less likely to cover, you may get this idea that you're starting to be a little bit of a me too.
So again, it's just kind of that balance of being able to move quickly and be nimble.
Does not seem like there are a lot of easy answers in this, in this-
No, it's not.
And you know, it's so easy to like be trolled upon now as a brand.
I mean, with the 24 seven ability to like slam a brand on social or if a founder has a misstep, it's one of those things where it's like, damn, if you do, damn, if you don't.
So again, it's a challenging landscape to navigate, but there are so many brands that are doing it well that I tell my clients, follow them, look at how they engage, look at their content, look at how they're doing things separately and like use this as inspiration.
We have a question here from our very own Ray Latif of Taste Radio.
Ray wants to know, how do you advise founders to incorporate personal stories into the PR communication strategy for their brands, especially when those founders may be reluctant to do so?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And when I had COVID, what we really said was we work with founder-led, mission-driven brands.
And why I led with founder-led, and this was in 2014 when I started the company, was because there was becoming a saturation in the space of CPG.
And when you go and you look at like a beverage set or a protein bar set in Whole Foods or Target, it is completely overwhelming.
And people are much more likely to pull a product off a shelf if there's a connection to it.
And we're humans and we connect through stories, and we connect through similarities, and we connect through human interests.
And so I strongly believe that this is important.
Where it gets tricky is certainly when you have a founder that A, either doesn't really have a founder story, like they didn't start their gut brand because they had celiac disease.
They just kind of stumbled into it.
And there you have to be careful about not scripting something that people can call BS on.
Speaking about this 24-7 news cycle, it's very easy to find out if someone's being authentic or not.
The other instance is when you have a founder that has an amazing story, but are really, really shy or not comfortable.
And so in that instance, there's lots of ways to kind of circumvent that.
One, you, I should have a publicist who can really be like their right hand and can guide them and can do media training and kind of help them feel prepared for every curve ball question.
When you're doing stories and interviews, always try to do email versus phone.
It's really easy for someone who's not comfortable to say things that they shouldn't say that may not even be accurate, but they're nervous.
And then it's really hard to get those quotes changed because it's an editor's job to put out factual things.
So if something is infactual, you can get a change.
But if someone said like a very ridiculous quote, let's be honest, that may make the story better for the publisher and get more clicks, and there's gonna be less of an incentive to change it.
And so I think it's like anything in life, the more practice you have, the better.
And there certainly are opportunities where you can have a founder story and you can pair them with someone who they're comfortable to shoot content.
And it can be content that, we have one founder we work with who is super, super shy, but she's a great writer.
And so we advise her, hey, we're not going to do content with your face, but let's have you start to do kind of like thought leadership content on LinkedIn.
So we're going to give you 10 stories that are trending and we want your feedback and then we want you to write on LinkedIn.
And then what we found is she's on fire and as people engage, she's an amazing writer.
So finding the format too, I think is really important.
Not everyone should or needs to be a TikTok star.
And it's pretty obvious when you put a brand founder in front of a camera on TikTok and it's painful to watch because they're not comfortable.
It's not second nature.
And so I would say like a good rule of thumb here is do not force it because it usually just ends up being worse.
With each iteration of social media platform that seems to be the most current, it almost seems like there's less polish and more transparency, which I can certainly see would make it difficult to fake it on camera.
So that makes sense.
And I think that authenticity, that's a great point.
Like what you're seeing now, content that performs well is shot on an iPhone.
It's not a high production value three day shoot.
And there is something really refreshing about someone that is not so media trained that they're a robot.
And so again, that just comes with practice.
That comes with just the more you do, the more you're comfortable in finding that balance of like being not just a talking head for a brand, but also having some sort of guard rails and refinements so you don't, you know, cannonball into the shallow and saying something you wish you could take back.
Rae's got another great question here.
What's an example of a PR initiative gone wrong?
And how can brands avoid the mistakes that led to it?
I'm sure you've seen this happen a number of times.
I'll speak a little broadly about that versus calling a brand out.
I think back to when Black Lives Matters happened in 2020.
And I was running Covet at the time and every brand founder was panicking.
They wanted to support, they were empathetic leaders.
This was something that was important to them, but how could they do something without looking like they were hopping on the MeToo bandwagon?
And so I think in that instance, what we did is we had a bespoke approach for every client.
If someone had not been active in the past about speaking about human rights and diversity and inclusion, the worst thing they could do is be like, we stand.
It's like, you're gonna have someone go to your last 40 posts and be like, well, where was this when it wasn't something a brand should do?
And so I think the best thing to do is like, take your time, be methodical, be authentic, and also like own up to if you made a mistake.
And this isn't just about like what you should or shouldn't post for something like that.
It's in general.
I think we've all watched what's happened with Daily Harvest and there's a lot of opinions on was it handled right or was it handled wrong?
And I have a lot of empathy for that team because you're making decisions without necessarily having all the information.
You're trying to protect a brand.
First and foremost, you wanna protect your consumers.
And there's not necessarily a tried and true rule, a rule book for this.
I think surrounding yourself with a really smart team, which is probably publicists, lawyers, crisis control specialists, consumers is a good step, but it's really hard these days to have a crisis, whether it be something like a very mild food recall to something much more significant.
People are waiting for you to misstep and people are waiting to slander what a brand has done.
And so the best thing I can say is like, say something for sure, but don't say something because you need to say something at that moment if you don't know what you're going to say.
Saying we're looking into it, being proactive is great, but if you say something, it will haunt you if it's not authentic.
And so finding again, I know that's where it keeps coming back, but finding that right balance is critical.
Great questions, Ray.
Thanks for those.
What I keep hearing you say over and over again, is that the content that brands are needing to put out there does need to be authentic and really speak to who the brand really is.
If it's the founder doing it, who the founder really is.
Is there a mindset that you can recommend to the folks at brands who are creating the content, whether it's the founder or someone else on the team, that they can walk into a situation where they're filming a TikTok video or putting together an Instagram post or a threads post or whatever it is.
Is there a mindset that you can sort of present to them that can make it easier for them to put something out there that will resonate with people?
Yeah, I always like to shadow founders for a few days.
And it's kind of like going to the zoo and watching animals in their natural habitat.
What is their body language?
Are they, do they have a dry sense of humor and maybe it hasn't been like brought up yet?
Are they wildly, weirdly smart in one area that we could maybe make some content series around?
And so I think everyone is different and I think the best thing a team can do is really just kind of like observe and then figure out, okay, what are you most comfortable doing?
What is going to perform well for this brand and what is authentic for consumers?
And I think there is something, while we do live in this 24 seven news cycle, everyone is experimenting.
Like no one still knows the exact right formula.
And there is this idea of just like testing and seeing what performs well.
Yes, you can erase things, you know, there's pros and cons of doing it.
If it's bombed and you erase it, but there's also this idea of just like, of admitting when maybe it was a misstep and having fun with it.
People know people aren't perfect.
And so what I tell people is like, doesn't have to be perfectly shot.
It doesn't have to be perfectly edited.
The content doesn't have to be perfect.
Let's just like get it out there and see how people respond and iterate in real time.
Love it.
All right, we've got a couple more questions here.
One more from, keep them coming Ray.
He wants to know what your thoughts on brands are that intentionally are generating controversy like Liquid Death, of course.
I mean, Liquid Death, if I had a dollar for every time it came up in conversations during the week, I'd be a very rich person.
I mean, what they're doing now with the Plastic Surgery Center is great.
In terms of eyeballs, I think it's a balance though.
A lot of people say, you know, Liquid Death is a media company that just happens to be putting out water.
And the reality is they also have to be seen as a water bottle company and they have to be seen as a product outside of a brand.
I would think if they want like an ultimate acquisition, there has to be product market fit for potential acquirers, whether it's strategics or whatnot.
And so it's one of those things where like they have really written the rule book now on how to just be ostentatious and come out with amazing campaigns.
And I think a lot of people now argue like, is the brand so big in the sense of that, that it's hurting or helping them?
And if I had gone to my head, I would say it's helping them because the more PR begets PR and the more you talk about it.
And I think that they've brought, CPG is a category where people have routinely kind of played it safe and for obvious reasons.
So when you bring something that is like, it doesn't smell like a dog, it doesn't look like a dog, it doesn't wag its tail like its dog, it gets people listening.
And I think they've done a phenomenal job of that.
But again, it's a balance.
They're still selling water.
And so how do you have a balance of not completely losing that while also feeling like you're much bigger than just a typical brand?
I have a question here from Alex Brooks.
Is that your cousin?
Oh, hi Alex.
He's not, we just have the same last name.
We actually just met recently and we thought, okay, do we have any family?
But we don't have any family.
But hi Alex.
Hi cousin Alex.
So cousin Alex wants to know, how would you advise a founder who's not the core consumer for their brand, which is a great question.
It sounds like your brand was built with empathy for an underserved consumer base intended as a generous offering to the market versus a product that was built just for you, which makes perfect sense.
And so Alex wants to know, if you have advice around the best way to communicate this without being confusing, great question.
That's a great question.
And I think the best thing in this question is like you're recognizing that maybe you shouldn't push a circle into a square, because we've seen that happen and it falls flat.
And that's where I think you really assemble yourself with a team of people who authentically do need that product, whether it be content creators, whether it be advisors, whether it be people on the team that you can really turn to that can start to be in the content.
I think that there's great examples of brands like this, where maybe the founder didn't have a specific need and how to go to it, but what they do in their content is they talk to their consumer that is there.
And I think there's many ways you can do it.
I would probably recommend like to begin a micro influencer strategy.
So it's a lower cost, lower risk way.
And there's so many ways, if you just go on TikTok and do like UGC celiac, you can find people that have celiac disease that put out great content that you could probably engage for not a lot of money and just starting to get it out and see what works.
But building a community and a crowd around you, I think can be as strong as having an authentic founder story.
And I think it's really smart to recognize that if it's not you, it shouldn't be you, and then how can you build that around you?
Could you speak a little bit more to that comment you made about searching for UGC in TikTok?
I think something that so many folks are having trouble with is building that library of influencers that you do want to follow.
So maybe you can send them information or whatever it is.
What was that search method that you just mentioned?
Yeah, absolutely.
So if you would just go and you would search UGC as a keyword on TikTok, and there's a million options, or you do UGC and then in parentheses, you put your keyword.
So if you did like UGC kid chefs, UGC male fitness influencers, and it will start to then populate people that have used those tags.
And it's such a low hanging fruit way to start to get people.
There's great resources like home from college, which has people who are like Gen Z that are just like very fluent with TikTok to create great content.
And you can search very specifically for what they do.
There's many social where you can cast influencers for really, really cheaply.
And you can use specific themes and hashtags as well to find a talent that fits what you're looking to do.
Is that search method the same for Instagram as well as TikTok, UGC and then?
Yeah, and I would say, I mean, people are doing less and less hashtags because I think it's just not as cool anymore, speaking about what we're speaking about, but hashtags are a great way still, I would say on like Twitter and Instagram to find the right talent.
And then something that's really easy is you go and you click on a brand or you click on an influencer, and then there's an option to see more like this.
And it's a great way to just be like, okay, if this influencer works, here are more influencers like this influencer.
And due to the algorithm that Meta puts out, they have the same sort of followers, they're maybe in the same demographic.
So again, another really, really scarpy way to start a cast for influencers and creators without having an agency.
I have a question here from Kurt Styles.
Kurt makes veggie jerky chips, that kind of thing.
Kurt, I think your question is, do you focus on the target market with the veggie crowd versus the plant-based products or both?
Yeah, Kurt, that's a great question.
What I always tell clients, the general rule of thumb is start niche, start with your wild brand evangelists, brand advocates, and then that naturally broadens out.
I think that if you try to be everything to everyone and you fit all these different categories, it's harder to create a name and a cult following, where if you go niche, it's a lot easier to build that evangelism.
And so to me, that would be my initial thing.
I think there's certainly things you can do broader.
But if you were to be like, is my marketing strategy going to go veggie crowd, or is my marketing strategy going to go plant-based?
Start with the most narrow focus and then build out.
And there's great examples of this.
If you look at Gatorade, they went after high-performance athletes.
The average person who drinks Gatorade is not a high-performance athlete, but there's this halo effect, there's that going into that lifestyle.
And so generally speaking, that's a good role of them.
I have a question from another one of your cousins, Anne.
Anne wants to know if there's any indication on what the monthly budget should be for UTC and influencer marketing.
I'm sure it depends, of course, on the brand, but are there metrics that you can...
Yeah, I mean, it really does depend.
And if you Google this, you'll probably get a hundred different answers.
So if I were to, if I were going to be hiring someone to do this, typically like the management fee of ad spend for influencers between 12 to 20%.
So let's say you have a hundred dollars, you need to save 12 to, you know, $20 just to pay someone to run it.
If you're doing it in-house, that's different.
Micro, mid-tier and macro obviously have varying degrees of compensation.
I've seen brands that have started out with a few thousand and have just hit the right micro influencers and seen something go viral.
What I tell brands when they're starting out is if you have the ability to do it, I would do a mix of micro and mid-tier to begin with.
Macro is great for brand awareness.
It's a quicker brand awareness tool.
There's some efficiencies you get with that.
But finding your brand evangelist and creating that cult following typically is going to start out with people that are a little more targeted.
And so do a mix, split up your budget between the two and then see what performs and iterate against that.
But you'll see people from using Home from College, you'll see people for $5 a post, you'll see people for $10,000 a post.
And there's not this rule of thumb that if it worked well for this brand, it's going to work well for yours.
And so really it's just experimenting, which I know it's kind of an annoying answer, not specific, but that's what I would do if I were you.
Thanks for the question, Anne.
I'm going to try to squeeze one more question in here from Alex again.
Alex, thanks for the question.
It's such a good one.
If your influencer partner is also an investor in your brand, are they required to follow FTC endorsement disclosure guidelines?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And I'm going to say I'm 99% sure yes.
Typically what you see is like if Camila Cabello for Ollipop was going to post something, she may not have to, she may because she is maybe getting equity instead of compensation and they're still in exchange, she likely would have to say like partner, hashtag partner.
There may be some more gray areas in terms of actually having to do it at the post.
That's a really good question.
And the reason I'm not saying it 100% is in the last month, there's been some new changing guidelines on this, and I want to make sure I'm giving the right thing, but I'm 99.9% sure that whether it's like a service for equity or an actual like compensation, financial, like monetary, there still has to be disclosure that there's a paid relationship of some sort.
Alex, thanks so much for the question.
And that takes us to the end of the show.
I just have one last kind of closing question for you, Sara.
We've talked about so much here, and I think it would be very easy for a brand to be overwhelmed by all of this, especially if they haven't sort of been immersed in this space and really doing all the things we've been talking about all along.
What are the, and we talked about this a little bit before, but in a nutshell, what are sort of the top five things that brands need to know as they're trying to dive in more fully?
Sure.
Gosh, top things.
One, I would say there's so many ways to be scrappy.
You don't have to invest a ton.
There's great newsletters like SnackShots and CPGD and great tools like Spate, which historically has been used in beauty, but it's more food and beverage now, where you can get every day to your inbox what's trending.
So if you don't have that team around you, there's sub stacks, there's newsletters.
So like one, you can do it yourself.
You just have to be a voracious consumer of these things.
I think two, PR is not always a magic bullet.
PR is not right for every brand in every moment.
So figure out when it's right.
I think three, having a holistic view of the landscape and starting to understand the connections between earned, owned and paid media.
So if you do do it by yourself, you can understand how to kind of leverage things.
I think four, you should start to get on those platforms, right?
So if you're not on TikTok, start to get on TikTok.
Say you're going to spend 20 minutes a day.
The more you're in the business of what you're trying to get, the better you'll be doing at that business.
And five, I think there's so many fantastic people in this space, from brand founders to publicists to agency owners.
I am always happy to be like, hey, you want to pick my brain for 30 minutes, reach out.
We have such an amazing ecosystem in this space.
And what I find is people are really, really willing to help.
And so obviously be respectful of people's time.
Don't ask to talk to them every week for free for an hour.
But what I find is most people that I know, if you send them a really thoughtful note and say, hey, would you mind looking at this?
Or do you think this is a good idea?
Nine out of 10 people in this space that we have are going to be willing to help.
And so be scrappy, going back to number one, but lean on this info system, because I think you'll find some great resources.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
That was great information.
I think you're going to have a lot of people looking to pick your brain after this.
What's the best way for folks to get in touch with you if they want to chat with you about all of this?
So you can find me on LinkedIn, Sara, no H Brooks, and my email is sarasara at itsitsgoldilocks.com.
Feel free to follow me on social and I'll spam you with pictures of toddlers, not very helpful for PR, but these Sara Brooks on Instagram.
And I'm on TikTok and Discord and Geneva and every other platform, but those are probably the best places to find me.
Sara Brooks of Goldilocks, thank you so much for joining us today.
For everybody else, we can continue this conversation in the BevNET & NOSH Slack Community at slack.bevnet.com.
We will make a tape recording of this call available at bevnet.com/communitycall.
You can sign up for future calls there as well.
Well, thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
