Hello, and thank you for joining us.I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET Inosh, and I am pleased to welcome you to The Nombase Podcast.Don't forget to check out nombase.com, BevNET's platform built for the CPG community, and it's where you can find episodes of this podcast and so much more.Today on The Nombase Podcast, we are exploring how brands use social media and creator partnerships to support retail launches and expansion.And we are so excited to welcome Emily Steele, CEO and co-founder of Hummingbirds, and Arianne Dora, social lead of Mush Overnight Oats.We'll get into the details of Mush's campaigns with Costco and Sprouts, how they activated creators regionally, educated consumers on in-store product placement, structured content and promotions, and use geo-targeting to drive retail impact.That is a lot.I am so excited to dive into all of that with both of you.Thank you so much for joining us, Emily and Arianne.Let's start off with some introductions.Emily, let's please start with you.You've had a background in branding and locally focused initiatives for a long time.Tell us a little bit about yourself and about Hummingbirds.So I'm Emily, co-founder, CEO of Hummingbirds, and Hummingbirds started in my own backyard.I'm in Des Moines, Iowa in a smack dab in the middle of the US and really saw an opportunity to bring local voices, everyday creators together to drive impact for their favorite brands in their backyard.And what started in Des Moines is now in almost 30 cities across the United States and a vision to really give the everyday creator opportunities to partner with brands that are trying to drive shelf level awareness, drive velocity and impact in the stores that they care most about.And so, been at it for the last few years and the stories like Mush and other incredible CPG brands are what gives us so much excitement about the impact we can have at the shelf level.So excited to hear more about that, Arianne.Thank you so much for joining us, your social lead over at Mush.And you guys have 105,000 followers on Instagram, so much engagement.Tell us a little bit about your role over there and what your social trajectory has sort of been like over at the brand.Well, thank you, Melissa, so much for having us.We're so excited to chat.My name is Arianne and I've been the social lead at Mush for about two and a half years now.It's been so exciting to see the growth that we've had in that time.We started out as a small brand.Our founder created us actually at Farmers Markets out in San Diego.From there, we had our first retail partner, which was Whole Foods, which continues to be a major partner for ours.Since then, we've just expanded out from there.Social media has been a huge part of that to really showcase this new brand.A lot of people aren't familiar with the concept over overnight outs or the fact that they're ready to eat, and you can just grab them and have this convenient opportunity to fuel your day.Social media has been a major impact to have that cult following, that word of mouth buzz, an ability to share that, what the product is, how it's used, and educate in a very easy touchpoint manner that everybody has access to with social media.So continuing just to educate on our product, kind of build that community of our mush fam, as we like to call it, has been super exciting and we just keep seeing it continue to grow and continue to have this major love on social.So it's been a major lever for us to continue to kind of educate on what we are and what we're doing.And we're gonna talk a lot about creator led social.Has mush's focus been on creator led social since around the beginning?Is that a newer play?How does that factor in?Absolutely.Our creators are major partners for us to be able to kind of spread the word of what mush is, how do they use it in their life, why do they love it.Even from the very beginning, just being able to kind of get the product in hands of people, have them kind of fall in love with it, share it to their socials organically, has been huge for us just to kind of get that word of mouth out there of this new product and what it is.So leaning into that, we continue to kind of grow in that space and really start to lean into some more like paid partners, UGC partners, things like that just to continue that word of mouth and continue to spread to different regions.Well, it's going to be so interesting to find out how you did evolve into some of those later stages of social strategy.How did you work with Hummingbirds for the two retail launches that we're going to talk about, which are Costco and Sprouts?So Hummingbirds has been a huge help for us.Again, we're a small team just as a company and especially on the social side.So being able to have these partners be a white glove service for us, be an extension of our social team to really help us find these vetted great creators has been super key.So their regionality is really helpful for us because in the CPG space, sometimes you're available at national retailers, but not every single door.So being able to have these creators inform that this product is available in our community to the people that follow them that are in that community has been huge to spread that word and just be able to have a partner in that space from creating the briefs, launching the campaigns, working with the creators, helping vet the content and reporting and everything on that side is a huge, huge lift and having those extra hands has allowed us to scale on that way.Well, I think walking through those two retail launches will help our audience understand exactly how you do what you do.Could you go through the details of those two launches, Costco and Sprouts?Were they national launches, regional?What were some of the pieces that you had in place in order to make the social components so effective?Absolutely.So we had kind of two different goals for each campaign on the Costco side.It was a national campaign.So we were available in every single Costco for a month's period.So we were really trying to look at it as a situation of kind of creating that buzz, that word of mouth of, hey, you can try this product for a limited time everywhere.So that was really the focus of the campaign was letting people know this product is available at every single Costco for a limited time, go out and try it versus our sprouts campaign was much more regional.But the beauty of what sprouts had to offer for us was that it was the first time and the first retailer that had our entire product line.So we have our core overnight oats, we have our protein bars and then also kids oatmeal smoothies.And then we just recently launched our protein line of overnight oats cups, the kind of an upleveled version of our original product.And this was the first time that you could get every single product in one store.So we kind of worked with Hummingbirds and they created this kind of build your Lush starter pack messaging that we went, that we leaned into.So between Costco was more so limited time offer, nationally available, kind of getting people excited about that versus sprouts was much more educating on.These are all the products that Lush has to offer.You can try out the different products, see what works for your life, for your family.So we kind of separated those two out and those different categories of what the value prop was for each of those retailers, given that they had kind of different offerings.And when I took a look at your Instagram, of course, it's amazing.So many followers, so much engagement.Is that the primary platform that you would use for something like this or is it multiple platforms?We do rely a lot on our Instagram and then also TikTok has been a huge one for us.But the beauty of Instagram is there's so many touch points within it.You have both the end feed and story moments.So many creators.So being able to really inform in that way and multiple areas, something that most people are on.Although TikTok has a huge following, it's a little bit more limited in some of the age ranges, even though that continues to grow.Instagram is one of those original platforms that so many people are familiar with.All the different age ranges are on there, so there's a lot to offer on that platform and a lot that people can learn from it.People go there for education, both from brands, from people they follow, from major creators.So there's so many touch points within Instagram, so that's something that we really love to lean on and the different levers that it offers.So when you're looking at these two retail launches, what does your game plan look like?If you're looking at the steps that it takes from beginning to end, how do you structure that?We structure it looking what we can provide information-wise on our own social, given the fact that our community there is very national.We have a lot of different people in a lot of different areas.So what information are we looking to share for our own content in terms of educating on the product, what the retailer is, and then kind of highlighting that regional availability?Something that we run into is that people will see the posts and then be like, well, I didn't see it in my store.I thought it was in this Costco.I thought it was in Walmart.I thought it was in Sprouts.But given that we have kind of limited distribution sometimes as we're getting our foot in the door in these retailers, seeing how sales perform, how people are enjoying the product, it can create a little bit of confusion when we're speaking to such a national audience on our own social.So I think that's where Hummingbirds really comes into play with a major value prop is that then we're able to kind of hit on these more regional areas where people are very trusted.They're speaking to their friends, their family, the people that follow them that can then go out into those retailers and find the product directly there versus causing some confusion when we're saying, oh, we're available at this retailer, but not all doors.And again, social followers, people like that, they don't always understand the nuances of that.Even I didn't know that until I kind of got to the CPG space.So I think that's something that is a little bit of a hurdle when we're kind of planning things out, like what do we want to hit on within our own social to inform?And then what other levers can we pull on a marketing side when it comes to creators or paid campaigns and things of that nature?Emily, when Arianne came to you and said, we want to work with you to support our Costco and Sprouse launches, what questions did you have for her?And what questions do you typically have for brands who want to partner with you?Yeah, I think so much of it is where are you going to be distributing, just like you had said, like which Costco's?Because we are very geographically centric, right?We're in very specific cities with very specific creators who want to do things in and around those cities and whose friends and followers are mostly comprised of people they actually know in those locations.And so for us, we really want to make sure the retail overlap makes a lot of sense with the cities that we have open with creators.And, you know, we are, what we do is totally a brand and content play.And so a lot of brands that are looking for very hard concrete data on velocity to the, you know, very, very specific skew number, it's not going to be a very good fit.Performance marketing and offline behavior don't always align super, super well.And so for us where we're like, do you feel really excited about brand awareness you can generate and get, you know, dozens of pieces of content that you could reuse for ads or your own organic?And so I think those are the conversations we're having with the mush teams and other, other customers and prospects about, hey, like this is where we focus.Our sweet spot is the everyday creator with a local following who loves creating content, mostly as a hobby, right?They're creator curious, they're growing, they're not professionals who are trying to monetize their entire life as an influencer.And so it's been really exciting though, brands are really looking for that type of awareness that feels really authentic, that feels really localized at a retail level.And so it's exciting that we can deliver it to the mush of the world and brands that really does move the needle for at a retail level.And how do you figure out how many creators you approach for each of the campaigns?So we have a system essentially in our platform, we have available campaigns that our creators, our birds can opt into and they can opt into as many as they'd like to.They can, you know, anyone can sign up and connect to their Instagram.Of course, that doesn't mean everyone is selected.Different brands are looking for different types of individuals.But we very much created a process where the creators are, you know, pushing a button and saying, I'm interested because of XYZ.We thought it made the experience feel more genuine versus a brand that's maybe just pushing out, you know, cold invites to people who are like, I like, I wouldn't eat this or I wouldn't drink this.It feels less of a connection and more of just like pushing at.So we look at it more of an opt-in and more experiential, like you get to choose your own adventure.And maybe this brand will choose to work with you and maybe not, maybe the next one.So that's how we really think about the Hummingbirds kind of ecosystem for creators.And are these creators paid?Are they paid in product?What's the compensation like?So they get perks as part of being in the platform and doing campaigns.So they'll get a $50 perk, a hundred.It kind of varies based on the brand and what they offer and the location.So it's all perk driven and the brand provides those perks as part of the campaign.Is it safe to assume that the more followers any creator has, the more perks you get?Or is that not necessarily the line you draw?Yeah.I would say people who really understand.So if you're a creator curious or you're an everyday creator, a $50 to $100 perk is probably a sweet spot for you.You're like, oh, cool.I'm not trying to do this professionally.So this is in alignment with what I would potentially expect to be compensated or enjoy being compensated with.Where if you're someone who's more of that micro influencer, that perk value just might not resonate.You might be looking for a different compensation level based on where you're at in your journey as a creator influencer.So we very much have like a, this might not be for you if you're someone who's outgrown the perk bottle.We're totally okay with that and we think there's a lot of places to play based on what type of creator you are.Submissions for the 2025 Nosh Notables are now open.Celebrate the most innovative food brands and trailblazing leaders shaping the industry.This is your chance to spotlight breakthrough products, inspiring founders and game-changing ideas.Submit today at win.bevnet.com/nosh-notables and help honor the best in packaged food innovation for 2025.And for the brands out there who may be putting together their own social campaigns to support retail launches, is there a best practice for reaching out if you may not already be in touch?Is it a DM?Is it a comment somewhere?For us, it is still sometimes a very manual process where we're looking again for creators who maybe we have a long-term relationship with.They already love the product, so then it's easy for us to send them a DM.A lot of times they'll have emails that's now natively linked in Instagram or they'll include it in their bio.So we'll reach out there to kind of put some feelers out, do it in the DM, see what we get most responses on.But again, sometimes that's a very manual process and you're trying to find very specific people, as you kind of mentioned earlier, that sometimes you'll reach out and they'll be like, well, I don't use this in my life.So sometimes when we reach out to some of these bigger creators or something like that, they may not be familiar with the brand.It doesn't fit into their everyday life so that it feels inauthentic for them to be speaking about it.So sometimes there's a lot of trial and error as you're kind of trying to reach out.It can be a large time suck as you're trying to kind of find the right creator fit, which is where something like Hummingbirds is so helpful, especially with their opt-in.We were really excited when we launched our first campaign with Hummingbirds.Their team shared that we had one of the highest opt-ins of people, really excited about the product, really excited to talk about it.And that's something that means the world to us as a small brand, but also the fact that we know then that the content that's going to come from it is really going to speak to these people's lives.The fact that they love this product, how it fuels their day, the reasons why they love it, and then that just creates the content to work so much harder for us and to build that trust with the people that they're speaking to, our ability to reuse it in a paid campaign and things like that because it feels very authentic versus maybe a larger creator that we went through a large process with.They have management teams, we sent a brief over and it feels a little bit more of that straight ad that people will tend to scroll away from versus something that they're like, oh, this is a creator that I love that's talking about their life, that they're really more engaged in the content, and then that message of what this product is and how they're using it feels so much more authentic and really comes across in the content.I think that's one of the beauties of working with these small creators and the fact that they can opt into the campaign and show their interest.So, that's been a major unlock with us with working with Hummingbirds.Emily, Arianne just said that they had one of the highest opt-in rates that you've seen.Tell us why.How do you create a campaign that creators want to opt into?I think what Mush has working in their favor is really solid brand awareness.They have a really great product that people love, and so there's some familiarity from my perception.I was already eating Mush and then y'all became a customer, so I was like, oh my gosh, I already love and know this product.Some of that, when creators opt in, they already love the brand and they're like, oh wow, I get to get a perk to talk about this brand.They're already a hype person.Then there's a different category of people that are just, they're looking for really better for you products, or really interesting brands, and so they want to go try it and experience it, and hadn't seen it yet in Costco because it's new.I think it hits a couple of different audiences of our creators, the ones that are like, I'm already eating this, I would love to create content around it, and then the other that are really that discovery.We have a lot of a discovery persona of creators in our platform that are like, oh, I've never heard of this, I'd love to try it.I think it really is a testament to Mush as a brand, the product itself being really great that people love too, so have a lot of social proof that works in their favor, right, to get such high interest.And we love seeing that, so we're like, yay, we're bringing in brands that our creators love, and then it feels really good to see that level of interest, of course, in a campaign.Well, I'm sure certainly there were points that you both wanted the creators to touch on.Arianne, I'd love to hear from you.What did the messaging that you shared with Hummingbirds and then with the creators look like?Did you have a bullet-pointed list of facts that the creators could call upon?Were there things that creators had to talk about?What do those briefs look like and what did you include for each of the campaigns?I think that's one of the beauties of working with Hummingbirds, again, as a very small social team, is that we're very in lockstep when it comes to creating these briefs.So we share over to the Hummingbirds team, hey, this is what we have going on.This is the key messaging that we're looking for, and these are the regions that it's going to be available in.From there, the Hummingbirds team creates a brief for us, thinks of some ways to message it depending on what the offering is.Is it a promo, is it national availability, is it a product line, anything of that sort?Then we work together to really define that brief, go through it, have a specific key messaging, and then also a nice little bullet pointed moment of what wishes, what are some of the benefits, what are some of the value props for those, again, that may not be as familiar with the brand and are a bit more that discovery creator that's excited to go out and try it.So, we're able to hit on the specific messaging for the campaign in terms of the retailer, what we're really looking to share, but then also sharing more about what the product is, why they love it for some of those people who may have not used it every day in their life.And then, again, it's just a support for those who have as something to kind of continue to hit on in the messaging.But having that partner to really create that brief with us with what they know would be successful with their birds is huge.And I'll just say too, from the perspective, I have like the brief right in front of me from Sprouts, and what I love, what we've learned over the years of working with creators, is they want to do a really good job for brands.And yet there's this pressure of like, I don't want this to feel like an advertisement where I'm saying word for word what you want me to say.And so for the Sprouts campaign, the content inspiration was like, show your Mush haul at Sprouts.Like, what's in your Mush lineup?Show a day in the life where you're featuring Mush.So we try to give the creators a few different pieces of inspiration that helps them say, oh, this is how Mush could fit in my life if I've never tried it.And these are the ways that I could display that, that feel authentic to me, but also are in alignment with what Mush is looking for.So that's been something we've learned over the past few years, to have just like, what helps everyone win when they have guidelines that aren't too strict, that give creative freedom, but also get to the point.So it's a creative dance, I would say.Arianne, for each of the retail launches, I'm sure that Mush had maybe some demos running, possibly at Costco, maybe at Sprouts 2, maybe some promos.How did you align your social strategy with some of those other marketing activities?So for Costco, we did have the opportunity to have demos be live during that time.And actually we had some content from The Birds showcasing the demos.So as they were there, they were able to show the product and show that it's being demoed, which was just another value prop for us.For the people that see that content can keep an eye out on their own Costco's for the demo.We like to say that tasting is believing.Again, a lot of people are kind of like, oh, cold oatmeal, like, what is this?Like, what is it going to taste like?So getting to have those demos and be able to showcase that both on social has been a really big unlock.But for a lot of the times, demos are very expensive to do in retailers.So being able to have, again, some of that social support when demos are not available is huge for these people to be able to try the product on camera, speak to its taste, speak to its texture, and almost be like a social demo for us is a really fun unlock and a really good value prop, I would say.And how do you measure the success of the social activity?Is it as simple as likes, shares, what does engagement look like?How do you know that it's performing to your expectations?We definitely look at impressions overall for that brand awareness moment, but especially engagement.And I think that is again one of the beauties of working with some of these micro-creators, is that they actually have very high engagement.They have a lot of trust with the people that they're speaking to.They are actively responding to comments, being able to be really in the weeds and answer any questions versus sometimes really big creators.They'll get a bunch of impressions, but are people really engaging with the content?Are they listening?Are they're getting their questions asked?And so on a micro scale, you have actually really high engagement, even if the impressions might not quite be there, which is another moment where then you can utilize the content for a paid ad or anything like that to garner more of those big impressions.But really that engagement and that trust is what's going to drive people to trial and get their feet in the door and really look for that product versus maybe just a larger kind of ad that somebody sees and they scroll past versus one that they're really engaged with.We look at the same, obviously, as we have these reports from our platform pulling the engagement and the impressions and reach.I think those are really critical as brands look at their overall social metrics.I think, too, as we look at the landscape of the creator economy, it's also the user generated content.So when you work with the creator and you also get rights to their content, you get this additional asset.You get to work with a person who becomes a customer, who hopefully becomes a customer again over and over because they had such a great experience with a campaign, and you get this asset that then you can whitelist, you can use in other channels as well on the website, on social, etc.So I think the creator space is so cool because there are so many facets where you can get a lot of runway from one creator or hundreds of them that is just so exciting to see.I totally agree with Emily.Being able to have this kind of breadth of content that we can use in multiple places.Again, social is great, but there's so many other marketing levers like on your website or in your emails or again for a paid campaign, a whitelisted campaign.So to be able to have full access rights to that content is huge.I can certainly see how having your consumers evangelize about mush is incredibly impactful.Do you have any examples of how you are able to repurpose some of the user-generated content maybe created as part of the Hummingbirds campaigns for Costco and Sprouse or something else in other places in your marketing activities in a way that was really effective?Absolutely.I think one for us is definitely, we've kind of leaned into paid media a lot more this year.We had kind of taken a pause from it for a while.Again, trying to figure out agency-wise, spend-wise, what content makes sense for that.It's a large lift.So being able to kind of reutilize these pieces of content in our paid strategy has been huge.As we kind of do one-off creators, things like that, we're able to really test and learn with our large library of content that we're able to get from Hummingbirds of what pieces of content are really resonating when it comes to a paid ad.Is it some of these more UGC ones or is it somebody with more name recognition?The balance of having both of those kind of re-target and re-hit.The fact that we can also then further target specific geographic regions that maybe Hummingbirds isn't available in, but we're able to utilize that content in that way has been huge.Then another one is we recently revamped our website.That was a big undertaking, but being able to have those videos playing on our site for people that are first coming to see what is this all about?Maybe they don't follow us on social, maybe they aren't on social.To be able to again have that kind of real-time active videos showing the use case, the products, everything like that is just another education point.That's like a quick scroll.Someone can watch it really easily, understand what's going on if they didn't take the time to really dig through the website, go through other tabs.Having that just to be another education point has been really, really helpful.Just to clarify, when you're talking about paid social media, that would include the partnerships that you had with Hummingbirds, is that right?So, we both are looking at it from them posting in their own feeds, but then also our ability to then take that and run that as a dark ad.So, something that doesn't necessarily live in feed, but is being served as an ad on people's Instagram pages, different platforms, on TikTok, things of that nature.Beverage companies are using glass to differentiate in the RTD market.Download our free resource featuring insights from the Glass Packaging Institute via Carota and Sandstrom Partners on why beverage companies are making the switch.Learn more at tasteradio.com/class.I'd love to revisit the two campaigns.So, for Costco and Sprouts, how long did each of the social campaigns last?And what did you find at the end in terms of success?And that might be repeat purchases.It might be what, you know, maybe you have continued presence in Costco.How long did the campaigns run and what did you see as the results?Absolutely.So, each campaign ran for about a month if a little bit less, which was giving us kind of a nice long runway to kind of test and see what people are kind of gravitating towards, what even in the content are people grabbing flavor-wise, things like that.It was really informative for us to kind of see what skews are really picking up and what people are gravitating towards.I would say on the Sprouts side, as I mentioned, it was one of the first retailers to have all of our product lines.So, getting this kind of awareness with both the Hummingbirds, of them going in the doors, sharing it with their followers.As people were then going to check out our product, we were able to kind of see how is the different product lines performing?Are people gravitating more towards our bars?Are they gravitating more towards our core line?So, that was one of the impacts that came from it.Again, sometimes it's hard to measure exact ROI or foot traffic and stuff out of social campaigns.But being able to see just some of the sales lift as we had this running, was really helpful for our sales team to understand data-wise, what products are resonating with people, what products are people looking for, what is really moving the needle.And then again, just anecdotally to see what people are featuring in their content, which flavors are they liking, are they preferring the protein lines or regular cups.So, it was just some really great learning evidence on our side, just to see what people are showcasing, how are they using it in their lives when people are showcasing, this is the protein bar, I'm having it for breakfast or I'm having it after a workout.It informs us of the use case as well to continue to optimize our own messaging.And a little bit of a perspective I have too, for some of these super retail specific, like only Costco or only Sprouts.There's also kind of a halo effect or extra support, if you will, to show, hey, Costco, like we are investing in getting real people in the door to buy products.There's no way they're just leaving with much, you know, like they're coming to buy probably a handful of other things.And so it builds a lot of confidence with retailers to say, hey, we're prioritizing getting people into the door and showing off the products on your shelves specifically versus all of the others.I know I've never left Costco with just one thing ever in my entire life.Emily, is that something that you see across your brands that the retailers and the buyers do really appreciate the kind of social backing that you guys are able to help brands with?We look at it as a way to that it really shows the retail you're investing in, and ensuring the product is moving, that there's foot traffic, that you're prioritizing ad and marketing spend on getting the word out.And so it builds a lot of confidence to show different channels going live, that prioritize now in XYZ location.And so we say at Hummingbirds, we don't guarantee sales velocity at X percentage, but we do when someone is on a campaign or in a campaign, you get product movement as a byproduct of doing a campaign, because you're required to go into the store by the product and create content.So it's going to create natural velocity, but it's not something that's measured beyond what we do in a campaign.Natural velocity that certainly has the potential to have a huge ripple effect.So and I think Emily makes a great point that we do see kind of that halo effect with velocities.But again, a huge part of us is showing our support to these retailers, to these buyers that we're really investing in you guys.We're investing in selling our product in your doors and getting people into their stores.It's great to show our sales team and say, hey, on a marketing side, we're supporting an ex retailer through doing this.We were able to generate 30, 50 pieces of content, 30, 50 creators going into the doors, trying it, sharing it.And so they're able to take that back to their buyers and back to the retailers and say, we're really investing in you guys.We want to be successful here.This is how we're doing it.Continually, we see from retailers that they're really excited about social support.They're leaning in on social.We see them interacting with our content, and they want to know that we're supporting them on social.And so being able to have Hummingbirds kind of in our back pocket, be able to share it with our sales team.This is the campaigns we're running.This is our plans.It's been huge to then be able to get even more retail support on their side.So it helps both from a social perspective, from a marketing perspective, but also really from a sales relationship perspective with these retailers.Arianne, you were talking a little bit earlier about how the MUSH team can take some key learnings from social campaigns like this, because there is so much interaction and communication.What were some of the things that you learned?It might be about product positioning, about the products themselves, pricing.What were some of the takeaways that the team had in seeing how these creators were interacting with the products?I think something that it continued to show was just how many different types of people really enjoy our product and use it.We've always said that we're a product for every single type of person, high performers, and that includes businessmen.It includes nurses, doctors, moms, kids, student athletes, anything.We have so many people that are busy in their lives.They're really focused on doing their thing and they need quick and healthy options.And so that was great to see that.What we kind of see as our value proposition was still coming to the head with what people were talking about, the fact that they could grab something easily out of their fridge.It's ready to go, it's healthy, it fuels their day when they're running around to do all the different things that comprise their lives.So just being able to really kind of reinforce that what we're doing with the product, what our mission is, is really resonating with the people and why they love it and why they're continuing to go back to it and use it every day in their life.Such a great way to collect data, another great way to collect data.And Arianne, for the folks and the brands out there who may not be, you know, have the resources yet to work with a partner like Hummingbirds, how do you find local creators?Is there a place you can go or is there something that you see in their profile?How do you figure out if a creator is local to the region that you're looking to focus on?It's definitely a bit of, I wouldn't say a struggle, but it's a little bit harder on that side just to kind of go in manually and kind of look up.So we'll find based on people's profiles, do they have it mentioned to their bio, where are they tagging their content?You kind of can scroll through, they'll have things listed, they'll have hashtags on that side.But a lot of times, sometimes we'll send them a DM and they aren't local to what we're looking for.So that's again where it's kind of that manual process.You can have a little bit of roadblocks.But again, a lot of it is just kind of doing a deep dive on social and seeing what's available.It's just a little bit of a process, but it's kind of fun too because you're able to kind of see different creators out there, build a little bit of a base.And I'll add too, as I think about even early days of Hummingbirds where we're looking for these everyday local creators to join our platform.Like we had a similar kind of challenge in the beginning days of who are these people, where are they at?And now we like have a very slick playbook and we really understand how to do this when we open new cities.But I would say for anyone who's like, we're opening in Publix or we're in Sprouts, and you really want to go kind of that geo-targeted way, but does it maybe make sense to work with Hummingbirds or another platform?I always find that if you can find like the coolest restaurants or things to do, or the places that seem really up and coming or trendy, or millennial, Gen Z, assuming that's like kind of the target audience of creators you're looking for, are already talking about, you can kind of look at who's posting about that, who's tagging those hyper-local things.And that gives you a good sense of kind of the pulse of the city and the kind of culture, or music festivals available in that community, or different events that happen annually that are more trendy and interesting.So that could be a starting point for someone listening that's not quite ready for a software solution, but wants to kind of dig in on their own, just find those cool things associated with each city and start there to see who's following or engaging and creating content about them.I think that's such an amazing tip to, yeah, really kind of get into the localized area.That was something we'd like to look up specific places.I think something else I've noticed is a lot of main cities, we're currently about to have an Austin activation this weekend.Some of the things that we had reached out to were these things to do in Austin page, like Austin 365, Chicago 365.There's a lot of city-specific accounts that post about events that are happening.You reminded me of that with the music festival call-outs and the restaurant call-outs, but they'll talk about street festivals and music festivals and things that are happening in those specific cities.Though I do think that's such a helpful tip to go in and see these localized, kind of larger city accounts and see what people are commenting, who's following that, because then you kind of know that they are in those areas.So that's such an amazing tip, Emily.I was just thinking about the Costco campaign.Since that was a national launch, how did you balance that with local creators?Did you geotarget certain regions where you knew that there was a cluster of Costco stores that you wanted to focus on?Or how did you work that out?Yes, I would say on that side, since it was nationally available, we worked with some, obviously, our own content was easier to share.Hey, this is available.You guys can all find it to our own community.But then we were really hitting on what specific cities.And Costco gets a little bit complicated in the fact that it is actually regional, which a lot of people don't understand.So there's Costco Northwest and Costco San Diego and Southeast, and they comprise these different states.So knowing that we're hitting on specific cities in these different regions of Costco is helping us support, because each has their own buyer as well.So we're able to say, hey, we're supporting your specific area, even though it's a national campaign, we're still looking at these localized Costco regions.So we're able to work with those creators to support and strive awareness for that specific area, just to continue to hit on that.Even though it is nationally available, it's still that trusted community situation of saying, hey, at my local Costco, I saw this, and those people are then able to go out and find it.Even though it is nationally available, it still has that kind of trusted moment, that word of mouth moment, that more community feel.Well, it's been such a pleasure hearing about all of the things that Bush did right.Emily, do you have any tips for our audience on things not to do with a social campaign?Whether they're using local creators, whether they're supporting a retail launch, any ideas on what the folks out there should try not to do?I asked our team this because I loved this question.I was like, okay, what's been a poor experience or what hasn't worked well with creators across thousands of campaigns?Here's what the team has said.I really appreciate their perspective because they're in the day-to-day details of bringing these campaigns to life, getting them written, getting them seen what the interest is.I would say some of the things that came up is giving creators more creative freedom versus what I talked about earlier when you have a lot of strict words that need to be used and it feels very forced.It's like, that's not how Emily talks and now she's talking like she's in advertisement.This is an advertisement.I'm out.So I think it's putting too many parameters and requirements on a campaign with a creator can feel very forced and inauthentic.So that's one.I think sometimes some uncontrolled variables like a new skew launch can be really difficult because sometimes those just aren't available in the store or where it should be located and that's sometimes, it's beyond anyone's control, but it creates a fragmented experience for a creator who shows up at a location and is like, this isn't here and this is where I thought it should be.It's hard to fully control all the time, but the more certainty a brand has around that, the better.Then the third thing is forcing a holiday campaign is what one of our CSMs mentioned.When a product is better for summer activation, let that be true all the time versus trying to force something into a holiday moment that maybe isn't.Those are just a few things that came up in asking the question that I thought was just something to chew on.Great tips.Arianne, Mush has a Walmart launch coming up.How are you going to approach that?Yes.This is something that was very exciting.It's very regionally based.We're only at about 300 doors, mostly in the Southeast and Southwest.Immediately, I was like, how can we support this?Because again, it's difficult to share on our own social, to say, we're in Walmart and then have everybody say, well, you're not in my Walmart.What are you talking about?Well, we can share an overview and be more prescriptive in our captions of this is where it's available.The really big lift for us is going to be the fact that we can lean on these Hummingbirds that have their trusted community, and then also help them get their foot in the door and drive some of the velocities too, just even on a very small scale, but be able to show from the beginning like, hey, we're getting people in the door of Walmart and people are purchasing their product, they're enjoying it, then they're sharing it with their friends and families, they're able to then go.But because it is such a huge retailer for us, and it's our first time available there, we want to make sure we're supporting it in all the ways that we can.We'll support it with our own social, but really leaning into Hummingbirds was huge because there were so many key cities that they're active in that aligned perfectly with our distribution.So we knew that we could really lean into this, have these Hummingbirds go in and form their local community that for the first time, mush is available at Walmart.And then again, as Emily and I have kind of discussed, we get this whole suite of amazing content that then we're then able to leverage in more ways.So then we're able to package that up and show it to Walmart and say, hey, we had all the support for this new launch, and this is why you should maybe have us expand in the future or bring in more product lines.And then again, we're then able to leverage that content for the more geotargeted ads to maybe hit in some of the areas that we are in distribution that maybe Hummingbirds isn't in.But for the most part, we had really great synergy in the locations that Hummingbirds is currently active in and where we're available for Walmart.So we're really excited to kind of launch with this new retailer, really put support behind it from both a marketing perspective and then also kind of driving some initial sales and getting kind of a sense on our end too of what are people grabbing there.Again, it's one of the first times that we'll have all of our new product line available, so that's very exciting.So again, just kind of testing the waters with this new retailer and showing, hey, we're supporting it in all these different ways and we're really excited about this launch and then hoping that we can just continue to grow that relationship with them.We are certainly so excited to see all of the growth for Mush.Arianne Dora, thank you so much for diving in and telling us how Mush has done, what they've done.It's been such a pleasure to chat with you and hear how you've run social strategy and it's such a strong one.Emily Steele, thank you so much for joining us from Hummingbirds.It's certainly a fantastic tool for brands to have, whether they're executing a retail launch or just looking to strengthen an area.Thanks so much for giving us a peek behind the curtain into what you do.For everybody else, thank you so much for joining the Nombase Podcast.Make sure you head over to nombase.com to listen to all of our episodes, and we'll see you next time.That concludes another episode of The Nombase Podcast.Many thanks to Nate Brescia, our recording engineer, Ryan Galang, our live stream coordinator, and Josh Pratt, our podcast editor.If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review and follow us on your listening platform of choice.Want to be part of a live recording?Register at nombase.com/podcast to join the conversation.You can also watch and listen to past episodes on nombase.com.And don't forget to join our Nombase Slack at slack.bevnet.com for company updates, industry networking, and community discussions.See you next time.
