Maren Hamilton (00:00:00):

I regret to inform you that brand is social, and social is brand, and it's about time we stopped pretending otherwise, when I think about a good social strategy, it's a strategy that's building this brand loyalty incrementally every single day

Cole Heilborn (00:00:16):

On this podcast, we go behind the scenes with industry experts as they break down what it takes to produce creative work that works. This show is produced by Port Side, a creative studio that helps outdoor brands produce strategic and emotional video content. Welcome to the Backcountry Marketing podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Maren Hamilton. She is, well, you're an expert of just about everything with social and content in the outdoor industry. Welcome to the show.

Maren Hamilton (00:00:41):

Thank you. I'm stoked to be here. Get ready for some hot takes.

Cole Heilborn (00:00:45):

I'm ready. I've been ready for two or three years now. We've been talking about this and the stars aligned, and here we are.

Maren Hamilton (00:00:52):

Yes, I'm excited.

Cole Heilborn (00:00:54):

We're going to dive into the world of social media. We're going to be talking about content, and I really think this is going to be an episode for folks who either one, want to refresh and reset their social media as a brand or completely overhaul and upgrade and retrofit and move forward into 2026 with maybe a much more cohesive, much more, I dunno, version two type of their social media. And so we're going to get into a bunch of topics, but Martin, I'd love if you could fill us in a little bit about your background, where you have spent the last few years learning everything today about social.

Maren Hamilton (00:01:33):

So I've been working in social media since the birth of Instagram, and it is so funny to think back to then when people were really questioning is social media just a fad? And to see how now it's become this indispensable, powerful business driver. I spent the last few years leading the social team at the North Face, really incredible experience. And now I get to lead marketing at PopFly, which is a creator platform that connects outdoor brands and adventure creators.

Cole Heilborn (00:01:58):

First question to kick us off, if you had to paint me a word picture of the outcome of a great social media following platform, whatever you want to use to call it, describe in detail as much as you can. What are the outcomes financially from a product innovation standpoint, from a community engagement standpoint, from a brand building standpoint? What does this look and feel like if and when brands have their social media is just, it's working, it's working really well.

Maren Hamilton (00:02:32):

Yeah, I think there's kind of two different ways that people look at it. One is like, okay, you're well known as being a brand that's social first. So when people think about brands like Duolingo, right? And I think that's part of it, but I don't think that's the most important thing to look at. I think it's really seeing your brand be relevant in the space, seeing that people have a reason to talk about who your brand is. And that has obviously huge impacts on your business, that it's going to be things that you're going to see come through and customer loyalty and sales and revenue. But it's really hard to actually track that back to social. There's actually this recent report from Deloitte that finally was able to establish the connection between a social first strategy and an impact on revenue for brands. And they found that brands that were social first had a 10.2% increase in sales, and they directly tied that back to their social strategies. And so it's exciting because we're finally at this point where we actually can bring data to support the need for having this really great social presence.

Cole Heilborn (00:03:40):

What does social first mean?

Maren Hamilton (00:03:42):

Yeah, I think they define it as social is infused in your brand and your marketing campaigns. How I would define social first is social's not an afterthought. So you actually have your social strategist sitting in with your brand managers as you're building the brief when you're thinking about your content plans and your marketing plans, you're actually seeing social as a key place where that comes to life versus thinking about it as a separate channel where it's like, okay, I have a campaign and now I need an email from it, and now I need an SMS from it, and now I need an Instagram post. It's actually bringing social much further upstream.

Cole Heilborn (00:04:19):

I see. Cool. So that kind of dovetails into our thesis for today's conversation, which is this idea that brand is social, social is brand. Tell us more about this thesis. Why is this something that you lay awake at night thinking about?

Maren Hamilton (00:04:33):

Yes. So I remember the first time that I heard the statement Brand is social, social is brand. And my former manager at the North Face, Zina Coda, who's just a visionary in the space, she shared this Substack article from Nikita Walia that went into this. And I would love to read actually a quote from it. She says, I regret to inform you that brand is social and social is brand, and it's about time we stopped pretending otherwise. And so I think that's really sets it up nicely that there is this maybe fear of accepting this because that means that we have to rethink how we do marketing as brands. And her whole approach goes into how we need to stop thinking about social as just a channel in the way we think of an email marketing campaign or a meta ad campaign. We need to think about social as the customer's experience because in this world that we're in now where people are on social media all day long, that's how they're receiving our ad messages.

Cole Heilborn (00:05:46):

Okay. So yeah, let's dive in here. You used the word fear. Why is there fear associated with this

Maren Hamilton (00:05:54):

Idea? Yeah, I think it's because it means that you have to change a lot of things to be able to put social more at the forefront. Advertising has existed in the same way for so long, and now all of a sudden it's flipping things on its head. It's happening to release control and allowing your customers to co-create who your brand is. It's having to create a lot more content. You can't just make one TV spot and call it good. So it requires a lot more work and it requires thinking about your marketing differently.

Cole Heilborn (00:06:37):

And so when you look at the outdoor industry through this idea of branded social, social as brand, what do you see? What are your observations?

Maren Hamilton (00:06:47):

Yeah, I see massive opportunity for brands. There's I think a lot of brands that still think in a more traditional mindset of, I have my campaign and now I make my Instagram post from it, or I make my TikTok from it. So there's a ton of opportunity for brands to really capture this attention through social and use that as a key driver of their business.

Cole Heilborn (00:07:11):

So can you take us on a brief history lesson of advertising? How did we end up where we are today where brands focus on these big campaigns, they roll 'em out, maybe they put a few posts out on social from

Maren Hamilton (00:07:24):

It

Cole Heilborn (00:07:25):

Just to maybe better help understand the friction from a mindset or from a workflow standpoint that's associated with changing to a more social first approach?

Maren Hamilton (00:07:36):

Yeah, I mean if you think back to Don Draper, right, you really just needed one good creative idea and you put that one good creative idea in a print ad, in a TV spot, and that could get you a few months of attention from the customer. Now you have consumers seeing 10,000 ads a day. They're scrolling on their phones all day long. Everyone is addicted to social media. And now you have to have a lot more content to break through. You have to have a sharper point of view, you have to have content that's actually providing value to people and not just being seen as an advertisement. I think this quote came from the old days of advertising of 50% of my ads are working. The problem is I don't know which 50%. And I think that's been exasperated by social because now you're putting a hundred times more content out and you really have to just experiment and test and learn and try to see what's working.

Cole Heilborn (00:08:41):

How many outdoor brands do you think are employing a social first strategy?

Maren Hamilton (00:08:47):

I think it's probably pretty limited. Maybe less than half of the brands out there are thinking social first. But the ones that are, you can just see that engagement and that loyalty in their socials.

Cole Heilborn (00:09:02):

Do you think there's an appetite or a willingness to shift how marketing is done to more of a social first strategy? Or is there friction for some? Is there a reason for the friction, like a good reason?

Maren Hamilton (00:09:17):

Yeah, I do think there is a good reason. A lot of the brands in the outdoor space are legacy brands that have this deep history and heritage. And so releasing a little bit of the control is kind of scary. You've been able to tell your brand story exactly how you want to tell it for the last few decades, and now all of a sudden you're having to put a little bit of that creative freedom in the hands of the community of creators, of athletes, of ambassadors. And so I do think that it's important that you still have guardrails. You're still really clear about what your brand stands for to ensure that you're staying true to who you are.

Cole Heilborn (00:09:59):

So I'm thinking about what you said earlier about how social is often an afterthought. Was there a particular moment in your career when social was brought much further upstream in designing whatever you were designing? And do you remember that moment? Yes. And then do you remember the impact by bringing social that much further upstream?

Maren Hamilton (00:10:20):

Yes. So I was really lucky that we had leadership at the North Face that bought into being social first and saw the value in it. And when I joined the company, we redid our entire creative process where previously social was an afterthought. It was like, here's the campaign and you'd hand it off to each channel and they'd go execute for their channel. And we rethought that whole process and we brought social much further upstream. Now we have our social strategists actually sitting down with our brand manager when they're building the brief. That means that the social strategist can bring social insights in, can say, Hey, when we did a campaign like this before X, Y, and Z worked, maybe we should experiment with these creative ideas. They can be that voice of the consumer. So they're actually in channel, they're seeing what people are commenting every single day.

(00:11:16):

They're very tapped into the customer, and so they can bring insights from the customer and they can also just help ensure that the content will actually see performance. And so even small tweaks can we have this really amazing creative idea, but we need to have a hook further up. We need people attention to be captured within the first few seconds so that they watch the rest of this amazing content piece. And so really changing that process is what I think delivered the most results for us is now our social team was actually able to shape how were coming to life in market. And there's some other things we did too that I would say are actions people can take if they're trying to make their organizations more social. First, removing the layers of approvals. This is probably the biggest frustration every social media manager faces is having to have 17 different people sign off on a creative idea or a final piece of creative. And if you're making your decisions and approvals by committee, you're just never going to have the best, most impactful result. You're going to have a watered down version of what you started with. So any way to dial back approvals and have an approval framework where, okay, if it's campaign related, we know it needs to be reviewed by this person, but if it's more quick turn, realtime reactive social, we can be a little bit more flexible in how that content piece gets reviewed.

Cole Heilborn (00:12:57):

Tell me about the landscape of outdoor brands out there. So you say about half of them are social first, but something you and I talked about in our intro call is this idea of the C of sameness, which is something that we've talked a lot about on this podcast. What's the landscape look like out there in terms of similarity, in terms of how brands are showing up in their social feeds?

Maren Hamilton (00:13:20):

Yeah, I mean, you just see a lot of the same content, and I think the reason for that is you have these key players in a space like Patagonia that do these amazing content series. Other brands see that and they're like, wow, this is incredible. I want to emulate it. And so you get a lot more of brands emulating each other than maybe coming with brand new ideas. I just re-listened to the episode that you did with Michael Minter. Is that his name from ll? Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (00:13:50):

Yeah.

Maren Hamilton (00:13:51):

You guys were talking about the hiking ad and he was like, you got to have the shot of lacing up the boots. And so I think it's like, yeah, people gravitate towards that because they've seen it before. It works. They think it's beautiful, right? Imitation is the best form of flattery. But I think what that creates is, I think if you look at a lot of outdoor brands, even if you just did a screenshot of their Instagram feeds, you would see that they look really similar. And if you didn't see a logo, you might not actually know the difference between them all.

Cole Heilborn (00:14:29):

Yeah. What are the top three stereotypes that come to mind if you picture your average outdoor brand?

Maren Hamilton (00:14:34):

Yeah, yeah. Well, obviously you have the guy standing on the mountaintop. Yeah. You have to have some crazy ski footage. And yeah, I mean the high cute shot that is always the shot, right? Is this very closeup shot of the boot of someone lacing up their boots

Cole Heilborn (00:14:59):

And they've got to be red boots or red laces.

Maren Hamilton (00:15:01):

Red laces for sure.

Cole Heilborn (00:15:04):

This is something I've wondered. Do you feel like outdoor brands, so I mean, we all play in the same places, we all recreate in the same landscapes or the same water is the reason so much of this stuff looks so similar because we're all doing it in the same places.

Maren Hamilton (00:15:21):

I think that's part of it, but I also think that especially with the state of just the outdoor industry right now, there is a lack of people being willing to take creative risk. And so your episode with Crisp Burchart is great on this topic about just it's easier to do something safe, it's easier to get it approved if you have all these layers of approvals inside your company, it's going to be easier to get something that is a safe execution approved versus doing something that's different that's out there. And it's interesting actually seeing, I feel like there's a couple brands that are really putting themselves out there in the last year and willing to do campaigns that might be seen as a little riskier and that are a little different. The Columbia spot that came out earlier this year, and I mean, say what you want about it.

(00:16:14):

Yes, there are things I would do differently with it, but it got people's attention. And if they would've just made that same video that everyone else is making with lacing up the boots with the red laces, no one would talked about it. It would've had very minimal reach. It would be continuing to contribute to that sea of sameness. And so I do think there's something interesting to doing something different and being willing to like, okay, yeah, there might be a few people that have a negative opinion on something, but instead of being afraid of those opinions, being like, well, this is going to help us further align with the core consumer. I think more brands should be doing that.

Cole Heilborn (00:17:00):

Yeah. The example that comes to my mind is oos Urban Outer, I don't remember what it's called.

Maren Hamilton (00:17:08):

Not Street Wear brand.

Cole Heilborn (00:17:10):

Yes, that's, it was like, oh, this is interesting. This is new. This is fresh. And especially in the last couple of years is there's been a lot of outdoor brands trying to figure out, well, how do we become more of a lifestyle brand? They're taking the opposite approach, at least in this campaign. And that seems to be a very social first campaign, at least in terms of how they shot it and how it's edited. It's really well done. I feel like

Maren Hamilton (00:17:36):

It's really well done. And the social first element I think is so huge. They're doing this whole content series right now where they're arresting people on the streets that are wearing their gear as more of a fashion or lifestyle statement, and they actually have a really funny one where it's the social media manager that's getting a citation. Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (00:18:01):

Talk to me more about how you view creative risk, because yeah, like you said, we've done some episodes on this, and I think I've even quoted this statistic to death, but I'll say it again. There's this report out there that is from the organization that organized the Keynes Lions Film Festival, and they did this study and they found something like only 13% of brands, all brands, not just outdoor brands, are willing to take creative risks in terms of how they show up in their campaigns and whatnot. Chris Picard said something really profound. He said, creative risk is like saying risky risk. The definition of creative is there's some edge to it. There's inherently some risk to it because to be creative means to be vulnerable. And anytime you're vulnerable, there is risk. How do you think through creative and risk in terms of social?

Maren Hamilton (00:18:52):

Yeah, this took me a long time to actually learn in my career, which is you have to listen to your gut and you have to be willing to hear out the voices of feedback around you. But if you're an expert in social, and this is why you should trust your social media manager, if you're an expert in the space, you will know you'll have enough past experience to point you in the right direction. And it doesn't matter what the idea is, there will always be somebody in the background that's saying, I don't know if we should do it, or maybe this is too risky. And so I think it's a skill that you have to learn. I think it's also a culture you have to create inside your organization.

(00:19:42):

The best example I have of this is we had this viral helicopter moment when I was at the North face where this woman posted a video and she said, I need a new rain jacket and I need you to deliver it to me to the top of this mountain in New Zealand. And so my team and I got together and we're like, what should we do? And I'm like, let's send a helicopter. Let's actually go show up and bring this girl a new jacket. So because we had created an environment and a culture that supported being creative and having out of the box ideas we were able to get to that, we wouldn't have been able to get to that solution if we were afraid of what other people would say. And I remember the idea and we were like, this is kind of crazy, but right now, what else are we going to do? This video is going to keep going viral if we don't react to it, and it's not a positive viral.

(00:20:41):

And so I called her CMO, and I just was like, Sophie, this is what we want to do. What do you think? And her response was literally, go have fun. And that was just the most freeing moment to be like, wow, we have our leadership's full support to go out and do what's right for this customer, what's right for our brand. We got one of our athletes, Jossie Wells and a content creator called 17 different helicopter companies across the world to find who could bring us there as quickly as possible. And we got to go out and film this really amazing content piece that ended up winning awards and being highlighted across the outdoor industry as how brands can be social first.

Cole Heilborn (00:21:25):

But you caught some flack for it in the comments at least. Oh yeah. There are some people who are not a fan of that

Maren Hamilton (00:21:30):

Moment.

Cole Heilborn (00:21:32):

So there's kind of that age old, 50% of people will love you, 50% of people will hate you if you're creative is sharp enough. Yeah. How do you respond to that criticism? Do you just let that roll off your back? When should you listen to the criticism? When should you not listen to the criticism?

Maren Hamilton (00:21:47):

Yeah, I think you should always listen to it, but then you need to assess if it means that you need to take action. And so having good social listening is hugely important. So in that moment, we were able to actually measure down to a percentage point of how many people are reacting positively versus negatively. And it was an overwhelmingly positive response. And then beyond that, I think you also need to assess what is the result of doing nothing. And so if we did not react in any way, we would've continued to have this negative narrative around our brand and doing what was right for the customer, which was replacing her jacket with a new one, and doing it in a fun way helped us change the narrative that was happening around our brand on TikTok at that moment.

Cole Heilborn (00:22:39):

Yeah, that's a great point you bring up, there's the cost of doing the thing, and then there's the cost of not doing the thing, and it's harder to quantify the cost of not doing the thing, but in this case, you guys were able to see where this was going and then curb it, change the narrative.

Maren Hamilton (00:22:57):

Yeah, and it's funny too, right? And this goes back to I think why there's some fear brands have about being social first is that you don't get to control the message all the time, right? It's controlled by the community and by culture. And so there were so many people that didn't believe us that we didn't stage the whole thing. That was the number one negative thing that we read was people were like, they made this girl post a video. I'm like, why would we do that? Why would we ask someone to post negatively about us? And so there's certain things too where you can just never convince that person otherwise they have this belief. Yeah, it's interesting.

Cole Heilborn (00:23:37):

So you said something, you called your CMO and your CMO said, go have fun.

Maren Hamilton (00:23:41):

Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (00:23:42):

Is that almost like a, I dunno if a framework is too strong of a word, but a principle of how social first brands could be thinking about social. It should be fun. It doesn't have to be this stale, cryptic channel.

Maren Hamilton (00:24:00):

Yes. Yes. It should be fun. And I think that's one of the core tenets too, of being social first is truly building community around your brand where the fun stuff gets brought to life. That's where a customer asks a funny question or there's endless content ideas that can come out of your audience on social. There was another funny one when I was at North Face that my team managed where someone had dropped their phone off a ski lift, they posted and they were in a North Face jacket about losing their phone. And the guy was like, and I'm trying to get ahold of this girl that I met on the Lyft. And so North Face commented something about Call Jordan from Hawaii or something. And literally these people ended up going on a date that was then sponsored by the North Face.

Cole Heilborn (00:25:01):

Wow, that's incredible. Do you feel like most brands want to shake up this sea of sameness?

Maren Hamilton (00:25:07):

Yeah, I don't think so because if you continue to live in the sea of sameness, you're just going to become less and less relevant over time. If you don't have a strong point of view that you're standing for, you're just going to blend in with everyone else. And so it goes back to the question of what's the risk of not doing anything? There's risk associated with being creative and putting your brand out there and doing something different, but the risk of just continuing to do the same is what leads to brands becoming irrelevant.

Cole Heilborn (00:25:43):

What role does chasing virality play in brands diluting themselves?

Maren Hamilton (00:25:49):

Yes. I love this question. So I think it's so much harder to do, but it is crucial that you don't just chase virality or chase engagement at the expense of your brand. You have to be way more creative. Then you could go follow a trend and see a big spike in engagement and your social metrics go up, but if that's at the detriment of your brand, it's not worth it. And so you have to get way more creative. And that's something that came through when we did this viral helicopter moment. There were so many other things we could have done that would've just been attention grabbing that didn't make sense for our brand. And so we actually had to really find that overlapping Venn diagram of the two to find something that was right.

Cole Heilborn (00:26:44):

Do you feel like most social media managers are encouraged to just chase engagement at the sake of brand?

Maren Hamilton (00:26:51):

Yeah, I think so. And I think the outdoor industry less so than some other industries, because I think the industry is just so rooted in values, really. I mean in having reliable, durable products. And so I think that is a positive of our industry is that it reigns us in a little bit. But yeah, I think generally as a whole, social media managers are expected to constantly have super high engagement viral content. And if that's their core objective, they might do things that are at the long-term cost of the brand, what they're charged with. So I think you have to have both. Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (00:27:34):

Do you have any examples of you're looking at a situation, you're like, should we pursue this? Should we not pursue this?

Maren Hamilton (00:27:42):

I don't have any great examples of past brands that I've worked on, but I think just seeing what's happened in the social space, and especially in the last year, a great example that a lot of people were sharing their opinions on LinkedIn about was the Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey engagement, the amount of brands that had absolutely no business making content about this, that were posting about it. It was wild. And I read some good points of view from people that were like, Hey, social's supposed to be fun. Let them do their thing. And I was like, yeah, to an extent, but if it has nothing to do with your brand, why are you inserting yourselves into the conversation? It just makes you look like you're thirsty for attention

Cole Heilborn (00:28:32):

Or you're desperate.

Maren Hamilton (00:28:33):

You're desperate. And then it was interesting to see too, how many brands just completely ignored intellectual property and copyright and just basically stole images and used them in the market. It was wild. I was surprised so many got away with that. The other place I see it a lot is there's been kind of this trend of the unhinged social media manager where social media managers are inspired by brands who did this because it made sense, because it actually tied back to their values. So Ryanair is the perfect example of this. Their values are transparency, budget and authenticity or something. And so their socials are honestly, they just go rogue. They put filters on the front of airplanes, they make fun of themselves and their customers for being cheap, and they got a ton of attention for it. And that made perfect sense for them based their values.

(00:29:41):

Also based on the sea of sameness of the airline industry. Every airline just has a super polished, overly produced creative that they put out on social. And so that worked for them. But then you see other brands see that, and then they want to jump on the trend, and they're not thinking about, oh, well I'm actually trying to commit someone to buy a $500 jacket. It does not make sense for our brand to take this unhinged social media manager approach. And now you have this weird world we've created where someone goes viral and there's 50 brands randomly commenting weird things that don't make any sense for them on the post.

Cole Heilborn (00:30:23):

Do you think this attitude stems from that saying, all press is good press, which I've never understood? I don't think that's true. That isn't true.

Maren Hamilton (00:30:32):

No.

Cole Heilborn (00:30:34):

Does it kind of come from this idea?

Maren Hamilton (00:30:36):

I think so. And I also, I agree with you. I hate that saying, and again, it's like people are not thinking about the long-term impact of these things. It can destroy your brand over time.

Cole Heilborn (00:30:53):

Is that part of the problem? Social media is such a quick in the moment thing that brands are like, oh, it'll be gone in 24 hours. What does it matter what I say today? Is that maybe part of, are we missing the compounding interest effect that social media has and we're just thinking about it as a daily way to show up?

Maren Hamilton (00:31:18):

Yeah, I think that's probably the root cause of a lot of this.

(00:31:24):

And it's interesting too because I had worked for a lot of CPG brands before I joined the outdoor industry, and so that compounding effect, it had less impact because you're selling a $2 can of a beverage or a $5 coffee. And so I think that's one of the things that the outdoor industry really taught me was like, Hey, we're building these really long-term relationships with the customer. And before I joined the North Face, I had more of, I would say, a similar approach to a lot of other social managers that engagement was the number one priority no matter what. And then during my time at the North Face and working with a lot of really incredible brand and creative folks, that really changed my perspective on it, that it needs to be equal parts engagement. And then what does it say about you as a brand?

Cole Heilborn (00:32:24):

Interesting. You had this in one of your decks that you shared with me, this idea that your audience doesn't care, your customer doesn't care. And I love this because it's not because I'm a nihilistic person, but I think it's this idea that the brands have to assume the posture that the customer isn't just waiting for them to come out with a new product or come out with a new campaign or a new social piece of content. Tell me more about this idea and how you see it.

Maren Hamilton (00:32:56):

So this is going to sound so oversimplified, but if you want to have high performing social, you just have to make content. People actually want to watch. So many brands are just making content that serves the brand and it's not serving the customer in any way. And so if all you do is put out what are essentially ads on your socials, people aren't going to follow, people aren't going to engage. You're not giving any reason to save that or send it to a friend. And so you have to actually put yourself in the mindset of the customer.

Cole Heilborn (00:33:34):

And when you say engaging content, obviously simpler said than done, how do you begin to create engaging content of value and of interest to the audience?

Maren Hamilton (00:33:45):

Yeah, there is so much work that goes in like prep work that goes into that. I think a lot of people think of social content and they think, oh, someone just took out their iPhone and captured this. And it's like, no, there's a lot of intentional strategic work that goes into building content that is going to provide value. A good kind of shortcut is the three E's. So entertain, educate, and excite. So content that provides value in the form of entertainment can be teaching you something new in the outdoor space. Maybe that's like you're new to this sport and we're going to teach you how to do it. There's a really funny, really old TikTok from, I dunno really old 2021 from REI, where it's just a store employee going around and telling you how to pronounce all the outdoor brands,

(00:34:38):

All their names, and for each brand he's like, it's not Tiva, it's Teva. And he talks through all of 'em. And that is one of my favorite examples because people want to know this information. They don't want to go into the store and ask for help and say the brand name wrong. So education can be a good space. Entertainment is really what social channels have become. If we think about how people interacted on social 10 years ago versus today, and it used to just be for friends and family, and now it's really this entertainment platform. So that's another great way. And then excite, so just inspirational, aspirational content. Content that maybe gets people to think a different way that gets people eager to go live by one of your brand values.

Cole Heilborn (00:35:26):

And so let's say folks are looking to entertain, educate, or excite, what are some next steps that they could take to try and put themselves in the shoes of the audience and make something that's good?

Maren Hamilton (00:35:38):

Yeah, you talked about on one of your episodes how to be creative and the need to actually brainstorm. I feel like the art of brainstorming has been completely lost in the social world. People tend to think of one idea and just go execute it. And I think that was something that drove a lot of our success at the North Face was actually having big brainstorms where we would bring people in from all different departments across marketing, but even in product and sit together and be like, let's just throw out as many ideas as we can. And some of those ideas were terrible and some of them ended up becoming large campaigns for us. So I think that power of giving your tame the time and the space and the frameworks to actually come up with new creative ways of doing things instead of, again, going back to just emulating others. A lot of social media content has come that where the brief comes through and it's like, here's what another brand did. We want to do it for us. Instead of doing that, how can you actually create some of these new trends?

Cole Heilborn (00:36:48):

Well, it's like when you look at the great examples that are out there to adopt it and then make it your own

Maren Hamilton (00:36:55):

Maybe

Cole Heilborn (00:36:56):

Only takes 10 or 20% of a shift or of additional work, it doesn't require that much more rethinking to retool it and make it your own. For a lot of the stuff that brands produce, I'm thinking about branded entertainment, all the short films and the long films that are out there. It's not simple to make a film, but it's fairly simple to figure out, okay, how do we take a story and make it uniquely this brand? What are some parameters that we can define that make it this brand versus this brand? And if you do that at the very beginning before you even get started, then you're in such a better position to actually make something that's on brand and strategic and is pulling in the right direction.

Maren Hamilton (00:37:45):

And it's as there's a lot of pressure on outdoor brands right now where it's the economic uncertainty still having impacts of tariffs and even impacts from COVID still affecting brands. It's like we're seeing so many that are laying team members off shrinking their teams, shrinking their budgets, and that sort of strategic creative thinking seems to be one of the first things to go. And so I think that's why we've ended up in this space where right now it feels like there is a lot of the same because of those external factors that are just putting the pressure on teams, right?

Cole Heilborn (00:38:24):

Yeah. Well, it's because to be creative requires waste. It requires inefficiency.

Maren Hamilton (00:38:31):

And

Cole Heilborn (00:38:31):

When you're looking at a budget and you're like, gosh, how do we tighten the belt?

Maren Hamilton (00:38:35):

And

Cole Heilborn (00:38:35):

You're looking at a team that 50% of the time they spend only generates good ideas, that can be hard to justify.

(00:38:44):

On the flip side though, if we think about the cost of not doing the thing, so sometimes I'm naive or I think I'm naive and I think could, okay, this might sound really dumb, but so given all of the economic uncertainty, is it possible that just great creative and social first creative could overcome those challenges for a brand? Do you think it has the power if done well to truly transform a business and help get around some of these headwinds that a lot of outdoor brands are facing right now? Or am I just naive and thinking that creativity is the answer?

Maren Hamilton (00:39:29):

No, I think you're right. I think it's a huge opportunity and unfortunately a lot of the brands that are publicly traded and that have a lot of pressure from shareholders to have to deliver on sales revenue right now when it's just like it's not happening for any brand, those brands are going to be the ones less willing to take risk. And so it's actually a huge time of opportunity for smaller, mid-size outdoor brands that are still privately owned and have the ability to take a little bit more risk. I think this is a time when they should be putting themselves out there and really making their mission and their values and their point of view known.

Cole Heilborn (00:40:18):

Yeah. Alright, well, I'm glad you agree with me to some point, to some extent. Talk to me about volume versus quantity. How do you think about those two? Do you think about them as opposites?

Maren Hamilton (00:40:32):

Yeah. The quality versus quantity discussion, it's always debated by social media people. What excites me about the state of social right now is that I feel like the pendulum had swung so far for a bit towards quantity where everything you were hearing from all the platforms was more and more and more and more and more. You just need to post more. And so it feels like the algorithms have adjusted and kind of come back a little bit towards the space of balancing the two. And so yeah, in a perfect world, you'd have a hundred incredible spots that you could run, but if we're rooted in reality and you have the choice of 100 mediocre social posts versus 10 really incredible impactful ones, I would go with quality.

Cole Heilborn (00:41:25):

And how do you define quality? It's not necessarily production quality, which is sometimes what it gets confused with.

Maren Hamilton (00:41:31):

Yes. I think it goes back to just are you providing value? So if you could have 10 content pieces that really provide value versus a hundred that people are just going to scroll by,

Cole Heilborn (00:41:46):

So if you were in that situation, you would feel confident arguing and defending your position. It's only post these 10 versus posting these a hundred. If we're looking at a given month,

Maren Hamilton (00:41:57):

Yeah, I would,

(00:42:00):

And it's hard, right? Because still subjective, even quantifying which 10 are the 10 can be something that's argued and debated. I have this point of view that if you don't see, let's say you've spent all this time and you've made this creative asset, but if it doesn't provide value to the consumer, you shouldn't even post it and it's just a sunk cost. I think it's really hard for people who have invested the time to just actually admit to each other and say, you know what? This is not going to have the result that we want. Let's just cut it because they've already invested the time. But that could actually have a bigger negative impact the way the algorithms work, they reward brands that can continually post highly engaging content, and so it can actually impact future content performance by posting something that doesn't perform well.

Cole Heilborn (00:42:57):

I was actually just today, later today, I was going to record an episode, a solo episode, and it was going to be like a one minute episode about respecting your audience for this idea. As you said earlier, everyone sees 10,000 ads a day, why not respect their time and their attention and actually give them something that's of interest? Why is that so hard to actually practice? Is it because we feel like we always need to be posting because we need to be, I don't know. I don't even know why. What are we doing when,

Maren Hamilton (00:43:35):

Yeah, I think it's a couple things. One, this constant pressure to always be putting new creative out because of social media, and again, in a way that it didn't even three to five years ago, it wasn't at this volume. A lot of brands are posting every single day. It's wild in the world of sport and entertainment, sports teams are posting a hundred times in one day for big events. That's absolutely wild. And so I think there is this constant pressure to always be putting more work out. There's also this constant pressure of we need to reach our goals for the month or for the quarter. And so to do that, we need more quantity. I also though think that there's a little bit of an ego thing where you thought this was the right content piece to make. You invested in it, you spent time making it, and it's an ego hit to have to admit to yourself, you know what? This just didn't turn out. The execution wasn't what I was expecting. And it's best for us to just scrap it.

Cole Heilborn (00:44:46):

I think you said this to me, maybe it wasn't to you, forgive me, there's either cringey influencer content or there's high level campaign production quality epic content, and there's very little middle ground. Maybe you didn't say that, but is that true? Do you see that out there?

Maren Hamilton (00:45:03):

Yeah, the conversation around influencers and creators in the outdoor space, it's one of my favorite topics because I think so many brands have done it wrong because they don't have staffed teams to run it. And so they're relying on an agency partner that maybe doesn't understand the space in the same way that they're in a house teens do. And so they've been burned by it because they've seen this cringey influencer content that's really just been created to drive an immediate sales impact and is detrimental long-term to the brand. And so the way I think about it is that influencer marketing creator, marketing ambassadors, it only works if you really understand the space. And so you have to have either staff in-house or external partners that are fully embedded within the outdoor industry and that know how to deliver. Because if you work with people that don't have credibility, that's a negative impact on your brand. Do

Cole Heilborn (00:46:08):

You have an example?

Maren Hamilton (00:46:09):

So I see a lot of brands that instead of working with someone that has credibility in the space, they're trying to expand to new audiences, which is good, but they're bringing in maybe a to know it like fashion blogger to talk about their product. And so sure, that person probably could drive a lot of conversions. I see why brands want to lean into that, right? Again, they have these goals of like, oh, we need to generate so much revenue for Black Friday, and that's a quick win, but that person isn't going to have the same loyal, engaged audience as an ambassador in the space that is a climber herself. And so I think there's ways to do it, right? And there's also a lot of brands that are still trying to figure out how to do it.

Cole Heilborn (00:47:01):

Is there a middle ground between the cringey influencer content and the overly highly produced campaign content?

Maren Hamilton (00:47:08):

Yes, and what I recommend for brands is to have an always on social strategy. So in between your highly produced campaigns that you're broader marketing team is working on, to have content that is made just for social, and this was something that drove a lot of our success at the North Face, was we would just have these quarterly shoots where we'd get Alex Honnold to come out to downtown Denver. We'd do a bunch of content, we'd get people climbing, we'd build a Christmas tree out of duffle, tree out duffle bags and just make content that was really just to serve the purpose of constantly engaged in the audience and it didn't need to be tied directly back to selling a specific product.

Cole Heilborn (00:47:54):

That's cool. And those are the things that your team would brainstorm.

Maren Hamilton (00:47:58):

We would brainstorm those. We would work with some outside partners on 'em. We really found this sweet spot of marrying a team athlete with a creator. And so we would have videographer who was a creator himself come in, Jack Cook, and he would actually would be the one that was shooting all the content. And so he's thinking about it from the creator mindset, which is what people are wanting to engage with on social platforms. So he's thinking about all the right angles to use to make this feel like this is maybe less of a lo-fi production when it truly is actually, it's pretty strategic, thoughtful approach.

Cole Heilborn (00:48:35):

Yeah. Gotcha. When you think about the phrase, knowing your audience, what are some of the attributes that you would want to understand about an audience before you started to create or plan content for them?

Maren Hamilton (00:48:49):

Yeah, I mean obviously all the basic demographic psychographic things are helpful. I really like to think about mindsets and just think about what is the mindset that this person's in both in life, but also while they're consuming my content? And so this person might be sitting on the subway in New York scrolling, and that's when they see our TikTok. And so how do we get them to actually care and stop and watch it? And that's a challenge. And just thinking about what their journey is as a customer. And so maybe they are someone who's attending a film tour, they see one of our athletes wearing our gear, and they're like, oh, I'm sort of interested in that jacket. They're probably not going to convert and purchase that immediately after. Now maybe they see our silly little TikTok and they're like, oh yeah, this brand, let me go to their website and see if they have this jacket I saw in the film. So thinking about the customer journey and just the mindset that they're in each of those stages is really important.

Cole Heilborn (00:50:03):

I dunno. A few months ago I did an episode with Bronwyn Foster Butler, she's a CMO at Aire, and she was talking about how her team, she used to be at Lululemon and how her team would use a brand muse to kind of

(00:50:15):

Understand where their audience would be. And when she was talking about their work at Finnair, and she was talking about they're a cold weather surf brand, and so she talked about creating content six months from now, imagining a surfer waiting for the winter swell to roll in and understanding and putting yourself in a place six months or 12 months from now. And then thinking about how will that person feel, and to your point, where will they be can help you create content for them and speak to those emotions that they're feeling that maybe they don't even know that they're consciously feeling.

Maren Hamilton (00:50:56):

And I think it's so important to have diversity in thought and to not have everyone that's working on a marketing campaign be the muse or be the target audience, but it is so crucial for the social person to be the customer. They're the ones that are representing your brand and that are having the conversations with these people all day. They need to speak the right language, they need to project the brand in the right way. And so that was something that we did at the North Face where we had separate channels for different sport verticals. So we had a climb channel that was ran by a climber who is super invested in the space personally. We have a trail channel that's actually ran by a runner to ensure that we're showing up authentically with those people.

Cole Heilborn (00:51:42):

Talk to me about platforms. So you were telling me about Pinterest is something that folks overthink or don't even think about, TikTok, who knows its future. I've heard that one of the reasons email is so powerful is because it's not going anywhere. TikTok could be gone tomorrow. Who knows what'll happen with Instagram and Facebook? How much of social and everything that we're talking about do you worry about its future based on some of the things that we see and we read about?

Maren Hamilton (00:52:17):

Yeah. I am 0% worried about TikTok going away because every brand that I've built a strategy for is platform agnostic. And there are learnings. Even if you built millions of followers on TikTok and it goes away tomorrow, you will have so many learnings from the content you've created on that platform that you can bring to other platforms. And it's this constant cycle, right? It's funny, I remember when I started my career, it was really just Facebook and Twitter at the time, and my job was to sell that into brands like you need a Facebook page and a Twitter account and to see, I mean, especially Twitter has gone through so many changes. Also, I refuse to call it X, and it's just wild. And even what Facebook was 10 years ago compared to what Facebook is today, it's like they're always evolving. They're always changing. The work that you're doing will set you up for success even if the channel changes and goes away. And I think TikTok is probably the one that's had the biggest impact across all the other channels. Even if your brand's not on TikTok, it has influenced how your brand shows up in these other places. Is it crazy to even try to think about a world before reels on

Cole Heilborn (00:53:34):

Instagram?

Maren Hamilton (00:53:36):

So you should be taking learnings from the channels and applying them elsewhere. But yeah, I think it's a very real, it's a reality that we might face, but I don't think that it's going to destroy your brand because you invested in a specific channel and now it's changed.

Cole Heilborn (00:53:53):

Yeah. So you would agree with the statement, brands don't need to be on every platform?

Maren Hamilton (00:53:57):

Yes. Yeah. Please be really good on one or two. You don't need to be mediocre on six.

Cole Heilborn (00:54:05):

Got it.

Maren Hamilton (00:54:06):

Okay.

Cole Heilborn (00:54:08):

I think I've also heard you say that one in 10 pieces of content might work, might work really

Maren Hamilton (00:54:14):

Well.

Cole Heilborn (00:54:17):

Have you been able to predict which of those 10 might pop based on your experience based on trusting your gut?

Maren Hamilton (00:54:24):

Yeah, I wish I could say, oh, I could tell you exactly which one of these content pieces is going to go viral, but that's not true. I think I have a really good gut reaction that I've built over years and years of study and testing and learning and figuring it out and looking at the data, but there's always that one piece that you just never expect that completely pops off. We were filming some fun content for the North Face where we had some athletes that were wearing Himalayan suits and they were reenacting an SNL skit where Timothy Chale is wrapping. And that was just a fun throwaway like, oh, we're just having a good time and we captured this. Let's just see how it does. Absolutely popped off, blew our expectations out of the water. So sometimes you're not expecting it. It's also there's times too where you put a lot of time and effort into something and the algorithm's just not on your side that day. And sometimes those things are just outside of your control. It might be the day that Taylor Swift announces her engagement.

Cole Heilborn (00:55:35):

Yeah, gotcha. And the internet is being pulled in one direction.

Maren Hamilton (00:55:39):

Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (00:55:41):

What's your philosophy on organic and paid? When do you stick with organic? When do you put fuel on the fire?

Maren Hamilton (00:55:49):

Yeah, I mean I think every brand needs to be doing both and for different reasons. And so organic, I like to think about people are opting in for your message, so you need to put content out that provides value, that's going to get them to follow your brand, to engage, to save, to share, to comment. All of those things wherein paid the consumer expectation, they understand it's an ad. So that's where you can be like, here's my new product. And so yes, paid advertising, especially across social, has gotten more expensive in the last few years, but most brands are still seeing a three to four x return on investment. So it's an important part to build that sales funnel.

Cole Heilborn (00:56:35):

Do you think brands should be selling in organic content or organic channels? Is that appropriate?

Maren Hamilton (00:56:42):

So I think brands can sell in organic, but only if they're still providing value to the customer. And that overlap is a lot smaller. So to do that in the right way, you have to get really creative. That's when you have to sit together and brainstorm and get some out of the box thinking to get to a solution that will help you do both those things at the same time. Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (00:57:08):

So Gary V would tell you three points of value, one sale, jab, jab, hook. Do you agree with that?

Maren Hamilton (00:57:16):

I don't disagree with it. I just think that the way people consume content is just continually changing. And so you're just seeing content in a different way. And so there's something to a content piece individually that does those things. But I think a lot of people think about it as like, oh, I'm going to post these more engaging pieces, and then separately I'm going to post this more promotional message. And you just dunno what the consumer is experiencing. They might see them out of order, they might see them, they might only see one of the three. So yeah, I think if you can do it all in one content piece, great. But that's hard to do. But

Cole Heilborn (00:58:03):

In terms of a general ratio, if you're looking at a feed, what's an appropriate ratio of selling versus just following the three E's?

Maren Hamilton (00:58:13):

Yeah, so I don't think that there's a ratio because if you are selling, you still have to follow the three E's.

Cole Heilborn (00:58:23):

Ah, okay.

Maren Hamilton (00:58:23):

It's not an either or it's, and so if you're still providing value in every single piece that you provide, and then maybe 25% of those are also selling something, then that's fine because you're still providing the value. And some brands that will be easier to do than others, right?

Cole Heilborn (00:58:41):

Sure.

Maren Hamilton (00:58:42):

Some brands the value is the product, that's why they're following the brand.

Cole Heilborn (00:58:48):

Gotcha. So I think about the audience's trust that they have with the brand, and I feel like there's something to the degree of trust that then influences how willing an audience is to receive a sales message. And I guess I'm thinking about Liquid Death as an example of this, and I know there are cliche example, but there's something to be learned there. They can post something and they can sell out of a product line or a merch drop because it's like they've built that trust and they're following a lot of good principles. But talk to me about the importance of trust and how it allows you to communicate with your audience.

Maren Hamilton (00:59:33):

Yeah, I mean, I think it's hugely important, and that's when I think about a good social strategy, it's a strategy that's building this brand loyalty incrementally every single day. That's the opportunity you have by sharing content, by engaging with your community, is to build that trust and to build that relationship so that when they are ready to make that purchase, it's an easy yes for them. The example of Liquid Death is interesting because I would also argue that just a new product is of value to that audience. They're following Liquid death because they want to know about new products, and that's not the case for every brand. I also think that's why when brands think about which products they're going to promote via social, they need to not just think about, okay, what do I have volume in? That shouldn't be what's guiding what product people are talking about. It should be what product has a story, what product actually gets people interested in the brand in a way that they maybe wouldn't consider it before? And so yeah, you might have just a ton of puffy jackets in stock that you need to sell out of, but that shouldn't be what you're plastering across socials.

Cole Heilborn (01:00:46):

So I've often thought about what would I do if I started another business?

Maren Hamilton (01:00:50):

And

Cole Heilborn (01:00:50):

I think you just gave me the key. I need to make a product that is the value

Maren Hamilton (01:00:55):

For real. And I mean, a good example of that too is nara. And so they make a women's pant that unzips fully so that you can pee in the wilderness. Everything that they post and their TikTok is incredible, and everything they post on their TikTok is value add in the form of entertainment. Hilarious. But they're also showing you, they're demoing the product in every video, but that's not what you're taking away as the viewer, you're like, oh, this brand's funny. They get me, and all of a sudden you've just watched a product demo and you didn't even know it.

Cole Heilborn (01:01:29):

Yeah. Okay. That's cool.

Maren Hamilton (01:01:30):

Yeah,

Cole Heilborn (01:01:31):

That makes a lot of sense. Trends follow them, avoid them.

Maren Hamilton (01:01:35):

Trends are such a hot topic in the social space, and I like to think about them less of the fleeting trends and more of what are the bigger conceptual creative ideas that are shifting in the space. I think if you get caught in the trap of jumping on every single trend, it's just like you can never catch up. You can never be fast enough, and it's hard to find ones that are going to be super relevant to your brand, but thinking about the bigger picture shifts that are happening across platforms, I think that's more of the culture that you can tap into.

Cole Heilborn (01:02:12):

So to your point earlier about Taylor Swift, it's not always appropriate to follow a trend. Is it realistic brands to assume that they could create a trend?

Maren Hamilton (01:02:26):

Okay. Please take out the part I said earlier about creating your own trend. I actually, I don't think that brands can really create their own trend.

Cole Heilborn (01:02:34):

Okay. Tell me more.

Maren Hamilton (01:02:35):

Yeah. Okay, so do I think it's realistic that brands can start their own trend? Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? No. The amount of time and effort that it takes to actually create a trend that's going to take off, it's not worth the investment in my mind for most brands. And again, also you're going to have to put a ton of content out that's not going to work to finally find something that will, so it's possible, it's not. What I would recommend is to try to create your own trend, and it kind of goes back to what does your audience want? Most brands that are trying to create their own trends are really doing it in a self-serving way for themselves, and so it's not actually serving the customer.

Cole Heilborn (01:03:31):

Yeah. I see. Tell me more about the science behind a trend. What's the concoction that's required for one to

Maren Hamilton (01:03:38):

Work? Is

Cole Heilborn (01:03:39):

It really just a volume game and because there's millions or billions of pieces of content out there that inevitably really one of them takes off and it just happens to be the right mix of funny and the right place in the right time or weird or whatever it is?

Maren Hamilton (01:03:56):

Yeah, I mean, I think that's why 99.9% of trends are not created by brands. They're just created by creators and the community on the platforms because they're just making content for entertainment purposes. And so that's, I think a big barrier for brands is if you're inherently just trying to sell something, it's really hard to make something happen.

Cole Heilborn (01:04:23):

Yeah, gotcha. Talk to me about ROI, so we've kind of gone through a long laundry list of points to consider.

Maren Hamilton (01:04:32):

Yes.

Cole Heilborn (01:04:33):

Now as we're trying to understand the impact of this all, you started this conversation by saying what, 10.1 or 10.3, there's a 10.3 increase, 10, 10.2. Okay. In the middle that brands can expect to see if they lead with a social first strategy. What are all the other ways that you try and measure ROI?

Maren Hamilton (01:04:53):

Yeah, so this comes back to the thesis of brand is social. Social is brand because to measure impact of social, I think we actually need to measure brand metrics. And so yes, there's indicators that we can look at. How many people are we reaching through social? We can look at impressions and reach data, what's our engagement rate, what's our save and rate and our share rate? But bigger picture, if we're using social to drive the brand forward, then we really need to be looking at brand metrics. And so things like an MPS score, a net promoter score, which is like where you survey customers and you ask them how likely are you to recommend this brand to a friend? Customer research in general, I mean, you could drill down and do much longer surveys to get a good read of what exactly is it about your brand that gets consumers to be loyal customers.

(01:05:53):

I also think looking at social sentiment, what are people saying online about your brand and what's the negative versus positive in that? That can give you a really good indication of what the general public feels. I think the one caveat with that is, I think you talked about it in one of your previous episodes about the 99 1 rule. So 90% of people are really just passive observers. They're scrolling by your content and they might have a positive perception of your brand ever, but you have no way to accurately measure that because they're not liking, they're not commenting, and so you do have to take it with a grain of salt that the loudest people are really only making up 1% of the audience. So you got to listen and you got to assess, but maybe don't pivot everything because you have a spike about one theme coming up.

Cole Heilborn (01:06:51):

Gotcha.

Maren Hamilton (01:06:51):

Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (01:06:52):

How often would you recommend doing surveys or research to try and understand the brand?

Maren Hamilton (01:06:59):

Yeah, I mean, doing it monthly is ideal because then you can have a more real time look at how you're performing. I think a lot of brands in the space will do a more simplified survey once a month, and then they might do a more in-depth one every six months or so to really try to get into some of the key insights with the consumer.

Cole Heilborn (01:07:20):

So that's fascinating. So brand is often talked about as this slow moving glacial pace of the behemoth that you slowly shape and sculpt over time. Do you feel like though, in this world of social first that within a month you can see a swing in terms of the perception of a brand?

Maren Hamilton (01:07:40):

Yeah. I mean, I think it'll be small, right? It'll start small, but it will build, I would imagine if you looked at the mammo net promoter score since their campaign launched a few months ago, that you would be able to actually see the material impact of it.

Cole Heilborn (01:07:58):

Interesting.

Maren Hamilton (01:07:58):

Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (01:07:59):

Any other thoughts, bits of wisdom or hot takes on ROI?

Maren Hamilton (01:08:03):

Yes. So you asked in a previous episode, are we tracking too much? And my take on that is not that we're tracking too much, but we're giving too much weight to certain metrics just because they're easier to track.

(01:08:21):

So with how technology has just shaped marketing, we have access to all this data, and that's good, that can help us make more informed smarter decisions, but we have to remember that that data is skewing towards direct impact and short-term results. It's super easy for me to look at paid ad performance and say, this Instagram ad drove a consumer to purchase this new ski jacket, but I'm only seeing part of the story. What I'm not seeing is, okay, yeah, this girl went to a film tour last week and saw the athlete wearing the jacket. And so if I just look at the data that I can see, I would say, wow, we should invest more in the Instagram ads. What drove the conversion when in reality there's something else that's happening behind the scenes that I just can't measure.

Cole Heilborn (01:09:13):

Gotcha. So how would you attempt to account for that margin of

Maren Hamilton (01:09:18):

Error? Yeah, I think that's where you just have to have smart strategic marketers on your team that are going to think longterm about the impact on brand and be measuring things like net promoter soar and social sentiment and share a voice and all of that. And Jordan Williams talked about it on his episode of having patience for it. If you don't see the ROI immediately, that doesn't mean it's not working. And I think a lot of us, we have to just marry the gut instinct with the measurement and be okay with, just because something is hard to measure doesn't mean it's not working.

Cole Heilborn (01:10:12):

What are some other measurements that you would caution people about putting a hundred percent trust or faith in them?

Maren Hamilton (01:10:20):

I mean, the biggest is immediate sales impact. Sure, I could go work with a thousand fashion influencers that are not the right fit for this outdoor brand, and I could drive a ton of sales by doing that. Those people could definitely get their followers to shop and buy this product, but that's at what cost.

Cole Heilborn (01:10:44):

Sure. How do you think about, you've talked about engagement versus

Maren Hamilton (01:10:47):

Reach. Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (01:10:48):

Tell me more about that.

Maren Hamilton (01:10:49):

Yeah, so engagement is such an interesting metric to look at on social. It's kind of become the golden child of what so many brands measure, and I think it's important to use as an indicator, but having higher engagement is going to translate to higher reach always. They're directly correlated. The platforms, the way the algorithms, if more people engage with your content, they show that content then to more people. Why do they do that? Because their goal is to keep you in their platform and to not leave. And so if they show you content that's good and you engage, then they show it to more. And so I think a lot of people get caught up on engagement as being the primary thing to measure when if really the engagement is just resulting in more reach, reach is in most cases, what you should be looking at and what you should be seeing over time and tracking the performance of,

Cole Heilborn (01:11:47):

I guess, what are you missing if you're paying more attention to engagement versus reach, and how does that influence decision making?

Maren Hamilton (01:11:54):

Yeah. I think it goes back to the 99 1 rule where, okay, well, you might have a bunch of people commenting either positively or negatively, but that doesn't actually represent the sentiment across your audience. Not every person is going to actively engage with what you post, and that doesn't mean it didn't have an impact. Imagine someone investing and watching a 40 minute YouTube video, but they never, and they never comment. That doesn't mean that that was wasted effort. That might mean that they actually closed their computer and drove to the store and bought the jacket.

Cole Heilborn (01:12:30):

Is there a world where you are looking at an engagement overreach for particular pieces of content?

Maren Hamilton (01:12:38):

Yeah, I think so. So if you're doing something that you're really trying to drive loyalty, and you're asking people to comment how long they've had this backpack and where it's taken them, sure. You want to see how many people are actually sharing their stories there. That's great.

Cole Heilborn (01:12:55):

Okay. Fair enough.

Maren Hamilton (01:12:56):

I also think there's a world where it makes sense to measure followers, and I feel like that's the one metric that finally people have realized that's not important. It's just a vanity metric. But I think if you're a really new brand in the space, there is something about creating legitimacy around your brand, and that's where something like growing your social followers can be more important. It's actually something that we're focused on at PopFly right now where we're a newer platform in the space, and so we want to be able to have a following that proves that, hey, we're trusted and we're the experts in the outdoor space of the creator economy, so growing our following is important to us right now.

Cole Heilborn (01:13:35):

So to a point, it lends credibility, but past that, the number doesn't matter.

Maren Hamilton (01:13:40):

Yeah. Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (01:13:42):

Interesting.

Maren Hamilton (01:13:43):

Yeah,

Cole Heilborn (01:13:44):

That makes sense. I've never thought about it that way. I like that. I'm going to write that down.

Maren Hamilton (01:13:49):

Yeah,

Cole Heilborn (01:13:50):

We talked about a lot of different things. We're going to slowly start to wrap it up and come full circle here, but here's just a random question for you that I was thinking about before this. What would happen if brands just shut off social? It just went totally

Maren Hamilton (01:14:03):

Dark.

Cole Heilborn (01:14:05):

And I know this is a really hypothetical question that isn't grounded in a real world situation, so it's to give an answer.

Maren Hamilton (01:14:12):

But

Cole Heilborn (01:14:13):

What would happen? What if they just said, we're done, we're going to send out mailers instead, or I don't know what the alternative is.

Maren Hamilton (01:14:22):

I think in our space, in the outdoor industry, if you turned off socials, you would see a direct and immediate impact on the bottom line of your business. There is not another channel where you're having this one-to-one conversation with your customer literally every single day. However, I actually don't think every single brand needs to be on social. When I do speaking events, I get asked all the time, we're an insurance company. I'm like, maybe social isn't for you. Then if you have so much red tape, if you are able to actually make value, add engaging content, then maybe you should be doing mailers. Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (01:15:03):

Okay. Is this too harsh to say if your brand can't show up and entertain or educate, what was the other one? Excite and actually create content that's of value. Should you be doing social?

Maren Hamilton (01:15:16):

Yeah. If you can't show up and provide value and actually create content that people want to watch, you should dial back what you're doing on social and you should just use it as a landing page essentially. So if people are searching for you, you have nice visuals that show your product and show who your brand is, and people can get that information. But I wouldn't worry about posting every day. I wouldn't worry about investing heavily if you're not going to put out content people want to watch. If all you're going to do is post essentially advertisements, then no, I wouldn't invest further. I would just treat it as just this content hub.

Cole Heilborn (01:15:58):

Fascinating. That's a bold take.

Maren Hamilton (01:16:03):

Yeah. I told you I would bring hot takes to this,

Cole Heilborn (01:16:08):

But honestly, I mean, I like that it feels right. It's like if you're not going to do it, well then don't do it. And because you're communicating directly with your audience, if you don't do it well, the cost could be much greater.

Maren Hamilton (01:16:25):

And I think especially as we think of smaller, more emerging outdoor brands, if you're not putting content out that's going to help amplify your brand and make your brand relevant, it could actually have the opposite effect. If you're only posting not engaging bad quality content, why would I then believe that I should buy an expensive gear item from you?

Cole Heilborn (01:16:54):

Okay, here's another question. This is something I see semi-frequently. You go to a brand's Instagram page and it's kind of dormant and there's not a lot going on, and then every other three months they have a giveaway thing where they partner with a whole bunch of other brands, and then the post blows up and the engagement is through the roof, and then it's back to 10 likes. And one comment should brands, this is too simplistic of a question, but should brands be doing giveaways?

Maren Hamilton (01:17:21):

Yeah. So I think yes, but only to a certain extent, and there's some things that you have to follow to make these giveaways relevant. So it needs to be something that your audience is actually looking for from you. So if you're a footwear company, the newest release shoe could be something to think about, and you don't want to become that brand that is just known for posting giveaways because now why would I purchase a product if I have a belief that maybe one day I'm going to win this product from you? I think the group giveaways or even just collaborative giveaways when it's just a few brands working together is like, it's a great strategy to help grow your audience with relevant brands, but I think a lot of people just overdo it. And so I'm just thinking back on all the times I've been tagged in these type of giveaways that I can't name a single brand. So sure, it drove engagement on the post, but it goes back to did it actually have an impact on your brand?

Cole Heilborn (01:18:27):

Yeah. Yeah. Great point. Okay. If you had to wrap things up for us and leave us with any encouraging notes of insights or next steps or takeaways, we've covered a lot. Covered a lot of ground here.

Maren Hamilton (01:18:43):

Yeah. I would leave us with brand is social and socialist brand, and if you invest in your social media team, if you invest in creating processes that help your team flourish, you will see impact on your brand. You'll see positive results.

Cole Heilborn (01:19:03):

Is there anything that we haven't covered that you want to make sure we touch on and leave folks with?

Maren Hamilton (01:19:11):

Okay. I have one more hot take about athletes versus influencers versus creators, ambassadors, which is that you really need all three. And I think there's been this maybe competitive nature to them where brands are like, oh, it has to be one or the other. We saw Eddie Bauer laid off their entire athlete team to invest more in ambassadors and influencers. You have to have all, and they work together, and so you should think about your athletes as these people that are building credibility for your brand. They're creating aspirational content. If I see that this athlete can go do this amazing trek in this gear, now I know I can take it on my little nature walk. You should think about ambassadors as being this community touchpoint that's building engagement and loyalty over time. And then as people that can actually have massive reach, they're going to have a lot larger following and engaged audience than some of the athletes in the space. So tap into them for that and for driving direct conversions.

Cole Heilborn (01:20:22):

Yeah. Incredible. Well, it sounds like to wrap it all up, provide value.

Maren Hamilton (01:20:27):

Just

Cole Heilborn (01:20:27):

Show up and have fun. That's what a social first strategy can be.

Maren Hamilton (01:20:34):

Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (01:20:36):

Well, Martin, thank you. This has been a lot of fun. We covered a lot. If folks want to connect with you and ask you more questions that we didn't have time for today, where could people find you?

Maren Hamilton (01:20:48):

Yes, add me on LinkedIn. Let's connect. Let's chat. I love doing little coffee chats with people to just talk about what's going on in the space. What are they learning? What am I learning? How can we share insights?

Cole Heilborn (01:20:59):

Incredible. Well, thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. You've shared a lot of good stuff here. I'm going to take some time and try to digest some of this myself and wrap it into my own learning, so I appreciate it.

Maren Hamilton (01:21:11):

Awesome. Thank you, Cole.

Cole Heilborn (01:21:15):

Thank you for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review on Apple. And remember, as you're working on that next piece of creative, the difference between creative that works and doesn't work often comes down to the hard questions that you ask while you're shaping it.

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