Welcome to the Community Call Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, here with my co-host, Jackie Brugliera and Mike Schneider.
If you're enjoying the show, please follow and review us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice.
Jackie, Mike, hello, so good to see you.
Hey, Melissa, how are you?
Great, how about yourself?
Yeah, we're getting into fall mode over here finally.
Fall mode, events mode, everything is moving at warp speed right now.
Well, all those modes sound important, exciting, and I hear that the West Coast branch had falafel for their team lunch today.
So things are...
Winds all around.
Winds all around.
Winds all around, look at that.
That's a win for our audio production manager, Joe, because he's been begging for falafel for months and he finally got it today.
So thank you, Joe.
You know, I gotta say, if we're gonna talk about winds, I have a, I know.
So in our Slack community, we're always looking for a little bit of good news.
So we put a question out there to our community, what their winds of the week were.
And we heard from Blake Berman of Spade.
He was accepted into 7-Eleven's Brands with Heart.
And we're just part of our Elevator Talk series.
Blake, congratulations.
I just so happened to have some Spade right here.
I've had two today.
Ooh, should I crack one open?
Yeah, you definitely should.
Do you want one?
Sure.
We were talking about it the other day, but Spade was the one brand that came to both coasts for our meetups.
So San Diego and Boston, they were present at our industry meetup.
They're in full BevNET fan mode, yeah.
Why not?
Why not?
All right, I've got the blueberry acai here.
Let's see.
I got Yuzu lime.
Oh yes, that's very tasty and refreshing.
What is the Dr.
Pepper one, the Dr.
Spade?
Dr.
Spade, yep.
That one's good.
Ooh, love a Dr.
Pepper.
Dr.
Spade is on par with Dr.
Perfi.
That tells you how good it is.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Congrats on everything, especially making a tasty beverage, which we are enjoying right now.
Tasty beverage in a beautiful can, very, very simple.
They made some really good choices on this can.
Yeah, they really did.
Well done.
So not only did I pull these spades out of our beverage cooler, but I also pulled these Philosopher Foods gut nuts off of our table in our dining area.
You know, this is a really interesting product.
Mike, what do you think about gut nuts?
I have lots of thoughts on gut nuts.
First of all, my 12 year old brain thinks that it is definitely full of innuendo.
There's a lot of opportunity there.
And then I was like, all right, what is it about a nut?
Why would you call it gut nuts?
And then read the package there, would you please?
Philosopher Foods gut nuts, they are fermented almonds.
It's a postbiotic snack and there are a few descriptors on the front as well.
Savory, crunchy, umami, zingy and sour.
Sour should be first.
They are quite sour.
I will say that.
I think they have a lot of flavor to them.
I think it's a flavor that not many consumers are used to.
It is a familiar flavor though.
It is a familiar flavor.
And I mean, fermented nuts are so good for you.
I actually, I know this is strange maybe, but I soak walnuts.
This happens like maybe two or three times a year, but I'll soak walnuts in a salt water solution, let it sit overnight and then dehydrate them.
And man, they're so good and crunchy.
So you rehydrate them and then you dehydrate them.
Does that make them sprout?
Is that what makes a nut sprout?
So, you know, I am not exactly sure.
I got the recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions.
I thought maybe you just came to you in a dream.
Actually, I mean.
It is you, so it could happen.
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure there is actually a recipe.
Just trying things.
Yeah, but I do think they're technically sprouted, although I would be the last person to know the correct answer to that question.
But they are crunchy and delicious.
Anyways, very interesting product from Philosopher Foods.
Very interesting, polarizing flavor, super tasty.
To some people.
Our director of sales could not get enough.
I'll throw that in here.
He said it was the best thing he tasted at Expo East.
He loves fermented, funky things, though.
So that's in his wheelhouse.
For sure.
I do, too.
I do, too.
Me, too.
I say that I'm not sure about it, and then I'm like, give me some more.
So I didn't get this on my first taste.
It's gonna take a few tastes, and then it's gonna become my favorite, I'm sure.
Yeah, for sure.
I think I would like a little bit of salt added because I do like a lot of salt in everything.
Why don't you just put them in a salt water overnight?
That's actually such a good idea.
Then they'll have been dehydrated, rehydrated, dehydrated, rehydrated and dehydrated.
Like at what point does the nut become mush?
That's my question.
I think we're gonna find out.
Last comment I'll make on the gut nuts is the postbiotic.
I saw postbiotic snack here on the label, and then I went down a wormhole of trying to figure out what the difference between all the biotics are.
So there's prebiotic, probiotic, postbiotic.
There are a lot of biotics.
There's no uberbiotic or hyperbiotic yet?
I mean, there probably is.
Coming soon to a package near you.
How many biotics are there?
That's a good question.
Do you guys know the difference between all the biotics?
I feel like it's so confusing.
I don't.
What is postbiotic?
Okay, because I had to do this, I read a long Wikipedia thing, and here's what I pulled out.
So prebiotics are the fuel that help keep your gut factory running.
So if you're picturing your...
Yeah, so it's fiber.
Probiotics are the factory workers.
So it's like the bacteria.
Yep.
And postbiotics are the end result of what you're producing, what you're digesting, and can contain nutrients and other stuff that keeps bad bacteria in check.
So the stuff that you want to come out, you're putting back in?
I know.
Well, I was trying to reckon with that in my own mind.
Thanks, Jackie.
Thanks for clarifying.
And I really don't, I don't have an answer for that.
Maybe it's time to go to the community call.
Well, we are thrilled to present this community call to all of you with Madi Lieber and Michelle Cordeiro Grant, the two founders of Gorgie, a zero sugar, clean energy drink, and they will be talking about their community first approach to beverage.
Enjoy.
Do you have a recent product launch, new hire, marketing campaign, distribution news, or some other exciting company announcement?
Let us know.
With our new self-service PR portal, submitting your news is easier than ever.
Just head to submit.bevnet.com to get started.
Today we are thrilled to welcome Madi Lieber and Michelle Cordeiro Grant of Gorgie and founders of Women in Beverage.
Previous to Gorgie, Michelle Cordeiro Grant was the founder at Lively, the Ligere brand acquired for over $100 million in 2019.
She also spent time as VP of Merchandising at Thrillist and retail giant Victoria's Secret.
Madi Lieber comes to Gorgie after spending much time in big tech at Google and Meta, a few organizations you might have heard of before, where she worked on special projects and programs.
And after Google and Meta, she moved into the Web3 space full-time running a community of 15,000 people.
Madi and Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today.
I couldn't think of two better people to talk about community building.
Thank you for having us.
Thanks for having us.
And for everybody in the audience as well, we certainly welcome you to join in the conversation.
We'd love to hear what your experience has been building community.
Any questions you have about best practices and ways to source ideas, these two women are definitely the folks you want to ask.
So please throw anything you have right in the chat and we will get right to it.
Speaking of getting right to it, let's get right to the conversation.
So I think that your past experiences are so interesting and certainly probably inform so much of what you're doing at Gorgie.
I would love to hear a little bit first about what you learned in your past roles.
Michelle, if you would start first, what did you learn at Lively, Thrillist, Victoria's Secret about community building that's helped you sort of roadmap what you're doing at Gorgie?
Yeah, I mean, it starts with building brands in corporate America.
So having had been a part of building Victoria's Secret and some other very, very large global brands, you learn the importance of consistency and discipline and making sure people really understand the soul and what the brand is about, right?
I always say, anywhere you go in the world, if you hear Victoria's Secret, it doesn't matter what language you speak, you hear angel fantasy pushup.
If you hear Ralph Lauren, you hear classic prestige luxury, right?
But to get to that point, you have to spend a lot of time building your consumer and your audience.
And so, Lively is where I realized you can reverse engineer it with the welcoming of social media.
So rather than spending so much money and time trying to figure out what that brand should be and then pushing it and forcing it on your consumer, you can actually just ask them.
And that's what Lively was.
We just went to Instagram.
I mean, this is free Instagram stories and said, hey, if your bra actually felt good, looked good and made you feel like your best self, what would that be?
What would that look like?
What would that feel like?
And that was the genesis of Lively.
Lively was born in January of 2016, but we didn't sell one product until April because our community actually told us what the brand should look like, feel like, what it should say, the words, the pictures, down to style.
How did you have an audience before you had a brand?
Well, that's where social media, sweat and hustle come in.
So, I joke, I was never even on Facebook.
Madi comes from the world of Meta.
I actually never even had a Facebook account up until 2015.
But what I realized is building a brand, you have to go grassroots.
And that's really where the groundswell starts.
But there's a faster way and that was Instagram.
So what we did was we actually just put a bunch of images and sent them to people whose feeds I would comb.
So I would look at girls in Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville.
At the time, I felt like the middle of America was overlooked, but you could tell by someone's feed how much they wanted to be a brand themselves.
So I just DM them, say, hey, I'm building a brand in New York, you wanna help me?
And we found over a thousand people that said yes.
In parallel, we also had in real life focus groups.
Another hack, Airbnb, a place on the Bowery and say, hey, 12 people, if you wanna come for wine and cheese and build a brand with me, yes, actually.
And so you can just gather trend lines of data where we would do focus groups digitally and physically to understand what did people wanna hear.
Turns out women don't like the word undie underwear or panties, they like undies, right?
That's a very strange thing to like unpack, but guess what?
That's what humans look like and feel when they're all together and they're sharing from what's in.
Data's not gonna tell you these little intricacies.
They're not gonna tell you what's the perfect image and the right pose.
They're not gonna tell you like, this is the graphic design.
These are the thoughts that actually speak to me.
You have to just spend the time to get the data.
Fascinating and certainly so helpful for the folks in our audience.
Thank you for that.
Madi, how about you?
You've spent so much time in tech building community and understanding what your audience members want.
I know that you also talked a little bit about retention.
What did you learn in big tech that you're taking to Gorgie and being able to kind of implement immediately?
Yeah, I mean, I think that the biggest unlock when you're thinking about community is recognizing that you're asking people for their time and their own personal investment, which is the single most expensive valuable resource that they have.
And when we're looking at work communities, right, you already give so much of your life to your professional career, to your workplace, to your company.
And so convincing people to give even more often was a little bit difficult and you need to get over that hump.
But at the end of the day, that means that you figure out what is truly valuable to them, right?
What is that two-way street?
What creates like that cyclical environment so that they feel like it's worthwhile for them to invest their time because they're getting at least that amount of value back, if not more.
And that looks different depending on the audience group, as you were saying, right?
And so building a community and an education program for Google Cloud engineers looks very different than building a community and program base that supports senior product leaders at Facebook.
People want different things and getting to that core nut of what truly will feel like a value add to them is the best thing that you can do because then it kind of creates itself fulfilling prophecy where you don't have to convince people to come in and you don't have to convince people to stay.
It just feels like they almost need to be involved.
And what is the value that your Gorgie community is finding in that sort of equation that you just described where they're giving their time?
What's valuable to them?
I think that's been the most interesting part for Michelle and I to figure out is we wanted to make sure that we weren't defining the value prop, right?
That feels very top down and oftentimes misplaced.
Like you could think that people are involved for one reason when in reality, there's a whole other host of them.
And so we really started from the basis of saying, what do you all want?
Like if you're getting involved in this community and you're coming into our digital platforms or coming to our in-person events, why?
And understanding what they were looking for was so critical.
And we found that there are kind of a couple of different genres of people.
And Michelle, obviously you can chime in as well.
We've noticed that there's a lot of digital creators that are looking for experience, networks, social support circles, because that can be a really isolating experience.
And so navigating what your relationship looks like online with different brands, there's not a great place for you to go and find resources for that.
So I think that's been super interesting because these creators are now coming to us as kind of a place for that.
I think there's also this middle group of people who just want good energy and good vibes.
They want to be able to spend time with people that are positive.
They're coming into our digital platform called Geneva and sharing their wins of the day, like what's brought them a good energy boost.
And so I think that that creates a really nice environment that people genuinely want to spend time in.
And then I think the last piece is kind of around this like fashion, fitness, fun, strategic pillars that Michelle had shaped from the beginning of people doing get ready with me is because they found friends that like share a similar background and interest to them.
Fitness girlies, we have a whole community kind of segment specifically for them.
And so we're kind of trying to figure out which of these genres are probably going to end up carrying the most weight.
What's the best, what's one of the best ways you found to reward your community members for kind of furthering your mission and helping build a brand?
What do you kind of give to them in order to keep them on board and appreciate them?
Michelle, I feel like you have always come up with such interesting incentive and rewards here.
So I'll let you take them on.
At the end of the day, a community is built because there's human connection.
There is some euphoric spark that they get from being a part of the community.
That's why you're friends with people.
That's why you hang out with the people you hang out with.
And for us, you find that there's this connection around good energy, that's the halo.
But then tactically, they want to be on our can.
Our can is the new Instagram.
They want to take over and be the front face of our emails or our events.
They want to host events.
They want to be treated like their own brand at the end of the day.
And what I think is always overlooked is people go to New York and LA and to these coastal like bustling cities full of influencers.
Then there's this middle and there's this middle that is the whole wide world of America.
And all of those humans are always bypassed.
But if you treat them like the celebrity, you treat them like the LA influencer.
I mean, we have girls driving an hour and a half to help us for an event.
We have people in Pennsylvania that drove two hours to meet one another because they connected in a Geneva community.
It's that two-way human connection.
You can give them codes, you can give them swag.
Yes, they love all of that.
But at the end of the day, it's that spark.
Love it so much.
What, how do you define community and where does community start and where does branding take over?
Where is that line and how do you define community?
You know, I look at brand and community as like these parallel funnels, right?
If you have a brand, you have a consumer, because you're selling a product.
And so, you know, most consumer funnels look like this, right?
You have this wide net that's at the top and then you have these very sticky, you know, high LTV consumers.
Community, you'll see the same thing.
You have this wide funnel at the top and then you have these really sticky users that don't miss an event, don't miss a post, don't miss commenting.
It's very similar.
They run in parallel and they have to be treated in parallel.
Now, the hard part is the brand will have very clear ROI, data, KPIs.
The community will not give you that.
And so you have to remember to not ignore your community.
It's always gonna make this funnel that much cooler, that much healthier, that much stronger, that much better.
How do you know what feedback and input to take from your community and help it shape things like packaging, marketing, that kind of thing?
And how do you know what might just be the opinion of a cluster of people?
Madi.
So, I mean, I think it's all a balance, right?
Because at the end of the day, the reason that you have this incredible group of humans around you is so that you do have that immediate pulse and gut check to make sure that the direction you're heading in is the right one.
And I think oftentimes we see brands and companies build in somewhat of an ivory tower where if you don't incorporate other feedback, then you are basically just choosing and making decisions based on the input of the very few people who all are heavily biased.
And when you look at a community like ours, right?
I mean, having a thousand people who are regularly engaging in an online platform like Geneva, who've downloaded a new app they've never heard of, get on that app every single day, participate in all of the different rooms and activities that we have going on and then make friends, right?
A thousand people might feel like a relatively small sample size, but at the end of the day, that's a decent cross section.
And so we try to make sure when we're taking into consideration their feedback that of course it's distributed across like gender attributes, geo location, economic background, their own careers, age demographics.
And sometimes we'll pull from different groups depending on the ask that we have, but we always try to gut check with them on anything that we're doing, especially if we feel like it's something that they're ultimately would influence their purchasing decision.
And it can be as tactical as a flavor date, right?
Like when we were launching our fruit punch inspired flavor, we're like, what should we call it?
And Madi started with ChatGPT to say, okay, give me like a cross section of like 12 different ideas, et cetera.
And then we put those ideas out on TikTok and Instagram and let everyone vote.
And like, it's like a frenzy in the comments to see it.
And when it's decided on the people that were right or were a part of the end answer are just like, yes, right?
And then they get to see that can on the shelf and they like feel this instant connection because they were like, oh my God, I weighed in on that decision.
I was part of that.
And even things as small as when we make our merch sets, right, like we spend a bunch of time.
I mean, not that much time, but a decent amount sending ideas that we had.
We are like, well, we can make 18 different designs of phone cases.
Which ones do you all actually like?
Because at the end of the day, our team might have one preference, but we're only a very small group of people.
And it actually probably saved us a lot of money from potentially going down the path that like maybe the group would not have enjoyed.
And so I think it's nice when you have this regular relationship with this group of people, because you can do everything from, should we make our logo bigger on the can, to something as tactical as like, which of these phone case designs do you like?
What flavor name should we have?
What colors actually resonate with you?
So it really just, I think, saves you like a ton of time and potentially going down the wrong path.
This sounds almost too good to be true.
There must be so much work that you put in to building the community.
You mentioned Geneva, for example, people need to download new software.
It's a separate community.
What did you do in that community to get things going?
Are you introducing people?
Are you setting, what are you doing tactically?
Yeah, like tactical best practices.
We absolutely do introductions.
So we have like a little card basically, that's digital that people fill out with specific info.
So they know exactly what to share.
We have a member of our team, an intern, who really it's like a great opportunity and experience for her to learn and basically step into project and program management skill sets.
So she not only welcomes everybody, she moderates the chat, she comes up with conversation topics.
She makes sure that any of our brand news is amplified in Geneva.
She does like weekly engagement with them on a digital perspective.
And then we try to do at least like monthly in person as well.
But it does take a lot of work.
But the investment really pays off.
I mean, for us at least, it's like a complete no brainer because you end up saving so much time and money down the line on asking and focus grouping and getting surveys.
But then more importantly, they drive in store for you, right?
Like it ends up really becoming, as Michelle said, that funnel, right?
On the one side of the community almost fills the funnel for your consumer side, because these are the people that created their own field marketing and merchandising chat in Geneva and are sending updates of which Sprout stores are out of stock to us, right?
So it's like that ends up being so incredibly helpful and they blow this out of the water.
And so the investment might feel a little bit cumbersome and like you're not seeing the ROI right away, but over time it becomes this incredible driver and lever for your business.
I remember in the early days of Lively, my board would be like, Michelle, you're spending so much time on this community, so much of your time that's sheer opportunity costs, right?
And I was always saying to them, like, I know you don't see it on the spreadsheet, you will see it in the brand.
And there's a really big difference between a product led company and a brand led company.
If you're a brand, you have to spend the time to really create a relationship with a consumer, with a community.
And when you ultimately do, you gain what is the ultimate gift of a brand, permission.
It's no coincidence that Ralph Lauren has every product under the sun now because they have permission, right?
And same thing with Victoria's Secret selling swimwear and active, and Lively even went from bras to swimwear active.
We don't know where Gorgie will go, but we know right now our consumer wants energy.
And here's the greatest thing that a community ever gave me.
Gorgie was not supposed to be an energy drink.
It started off as I had supplements that I was taking every day, and I was like, there's gotta be a more fun way to take these than these little capsules that make my tummy hurt.
And I said to the community in a Google Doc survey on my phone, do you want it in candy?
Do you want it in chocolate?
Do you want it in powder?
Do you want it in a drink?
And they were like, we want it in a drink.
And I was like, great, a powder that you can mix with water?
And they're like, no, a ready to drink.
And that's what actually got my wheels turning to eventually get me to energy.
But had I not asked, I'd have a candy.
Fascinating.
I think one of the more intense difficulties as a founder is not creating the product and the brand just in your own vision.
And it's sometimes hard for a founder to separate what they want as a consumer from what their consumer base wants.
But this sounds like certainly an almost foolproof way to do it.
So let me ask you this.
This sounds fantastic.
And certainly we can all see the impact and progress that your community building has made so far.
What is in your toolkit for other founders out there who are looking to build their communities?
What are you, which social channels are you using?
Are you having events?
How are you doing this?
What tools are you using?
Madi, wanna jump in on tools?
Sure, absolutely.
I think the standard social channels are almost like a baseline foundation, right?
If you don't have those, this will not work.
So you need to be active on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, which is actually like a great funnel for us.
And think of that almost as like your megaphone out to the world, right?
And so whenever we're talking about community, we kind of talk about our external messaging and our internal programming.
So the forward-facing like traditional social media tools are very effective at pulling people in, but then those are not very effective at keeping people engaged.
And there's a number of reasons that I won't totally get into.
Everyone's always like the algorithm, and that's true.
But it's also not made for you to be regularly engaging and creating a two-way street.
It really is more of a one-way street out to the group that you're engaging with in your follower base.
So converting them into an area where you can actively engage is crucial.
And people do that a variety of different ways, right?
It could be Facebook groups, it can be Slack.
We've ended up using a platform called Geneva, which is a lot more fun.
The UI is great, it's very exciting.
You complete something and you get a little confetti pop and it's very custom to your brand.
So you can choose coloring, visuals, all of that stuff, create custom emojis and all of that I think is really nice.
It also allows you to organize things into channels or rooms.
So as I was saying, like the pillars of Fashion Fitness Fun, we can have individual pillars for those.
We have different rooms for each geographic location.
So we have like an LA group and so whenever I have an event or a pop-up that's happening in LA, we did a Barbie event last week, threw it in there and like 10 people showed up, right?
Or SoulCycle classes.
It makes it really easy to communicate with people.
So I'd highly recommend not only focusing on your megaphone channels like social media, but also focusing and figuring out what the right tool is for you to continue that engagement and really maximize retention for the individuals that you're engaging with.
One thing I would also add is you have to start with the right content and the right like image and tagline and introduction.
And you have to really spend the time to tinker to see what will create that emotional spark for people to want to click and learn more and eventually join.
If you don't spend the time on making sure it's the right content, the right message, the right kind of like, oh, is this, is this something you're interested in?
You'll just flatline.
And so that's why I say like always survey and like focus group and like the hackiest way, the hackiest.
So-
Like what?
Like how hacky are we talking?
I have some very embarrassing PowerPoints in Google slides that Madi has seen and brand boards in which I've literally gone into my pantry and stolen like birthday gazoos for my kids and like fluorescent straws and just created image boards so people could see what I was trying to verbalize.
Humans have like five, seven sentences, whatever you want to call it.
Eyes, you know, sight, they need to hear and they need to see what you're trying to do.
Music helps.
I always say videos, you know, the best way.
But then after you send it, survey them.
And so here's another hack.
I create Google surveys on my phone.
If you create it on your computer, it'll be too long.
No one will fill it out.
If you create it on your phone, you're going to make it much faster, multiple choice, and always make sure it's more multiple choice and it only takes people at least maximum two minutes.
Then step two, which is the hack, do not send it to your friends and family.
They're going to tell you they love it or they hate it because they love you.
You have to go two degrees of separation.
So I always send it to my friends, my family.
You don't fill it out.
Send it to all your friends.
Send it to all of your coworkers.
Send it to the people at the gym, you know, whoever it is, so that you get statistical data from effectively strangers.
And are you saying that you're surveying folks on what they think about some of the content you're producing or is it more, is it something else?
All of it.
So, yeah, so it started with, hey, I want to create a brand around this idea.
That's a survey.
And once I get to the idea, which was obviously energy meets wellness, I'm like, great, I want to create this energy meets wellness brand.
It's going to look like this.
What do you think?
Do you like it like this or like this?
A or B?
Then I get to A.
Like, great.
Now this brand is going to say either one of these sentences.
Which sentence do you like the most?
A, B or C.
And just like every decision, you don't have to make it.
Get statistical up.
Especially for something like building our community, it was so easy for us to put up Instagram polls and our Instagram stories, right?
Because these are the people that we wanted involved anyways.
And so we would just ask like, hey, what's a cute name that would, that you would actually enjoy like associating yourself with?
Like what's a good branding for this?
So we're not like join our community platform.
And instead we have like some cute branding around that too.
And we ended up coming up with the Good Energy Club, but that was from tons of people on Instagram providing their thoughts, us putting out which of these four actually resonate with you, which of these images make you feel excited to like be a part of it.
And then that's what we incorporated into the platform.
So it doesn't just feel like it's like a Microsoft Teams chat and it actually feels like it's a clubhouse.
And so we now get texts from those community members all the time being like, oh, I saw in the club that you guys are doing this thing.
And so it's cute because it's become this jargon and verbiage that people actually resonate with.
So it's like the brand itself, Gorgie, has created branding around its community.
And I think that's kind of the whole point is that it feels like it's kind of its own little home base and egg that people can be a part of.
You actually go down like in spiral into the archives of social for Gorgie, you'll see that like even our first labels, we asked our first flavors, it was like a dragon fruit battlefield.
We thought dragon fruit, they're like watermelon.
Madi, you spend so much time in big tech.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
When you look at the four social channels, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, really in a nutshell, because I'm sure we could spend an entire hour on this.
How do you think of each of those platforms as community builders?
How do you look at those platforms when you're thinking about what your social strategy will be?
Well, I mean, even just as users, all of us use them for different reasons, right?
And so I think you don't even need to go through and read tons of best practices.
And yes, there are 85 Harvard Business Review articles that you could get through about this that have statistical evidence, and those are great.
But think about yourself and your friends and your family.
What are you using these different platforms for?
Facebook is totally just scrolling at this point, and people are not spending a significant amount of their day on it.
We still, there's a significant amount of daily active users, but the usage time has gone down astronomically.
That's almost more like a historical thread so that you have evidence and like this backlog of all of the stuff that your brand or your company has done.
Instagram is a lot more effective for visual aesthetic, right?
And so that's the one that people are going to because they want inspiration, aspiration, and those are the ones that you're like looking at for that purpose.
Then when you go to TikTok, it's a lot more about quick entertainment.
And so we've seen so many people move over from Instagram to TikTok for that reason.
You've seen Instagram try to come up with tons of different features to compete with TikTok so that it feels really engaging and exciting.
So your brand almost has a different personality on each of them.
And I think that's something that we've spent a lot of time figuring out, right?
Where Facebook feels a little bit more like a catalog or like a newspaper around what we do.
Instagram's almost like a Pinterest board.
It's a little bit more aesthetically pleasing.
And we use that more as a traditional megaphone.
And then TikTok is the space where we're like, interns go crazy, post anything you want to, don't edit it, don't send it to anyone.
Say whatever you want.
And it works because those are the different kind of like personality traits that people are going to those platforms specifically for.
I don't know if that's, I know that's like a little bit vague, but I think it's helpful to just think about why you're using the platform and then adjust your approach.
Yeah, that's super helpful.
And then Twitter again is...
The interesting thing about Twitter, right?
Is that we're so used to social media where you share things visually, and Twitter or threads are the one platform or the platforms where you're genuinely sharing thoughts.
And so people are following you for thought leadership, for jokes, for like, you know, funny content.
And so Twitter is actually really effective in terms of reach, particularly new audience who you don't have on Instagram or TikTok, like there's barely any overlap.
And so it's a really good strategic entry point to begin conversations.
I hope everyone in our audience is taking notes.
Yeah, get your strategy coming up.
I know that we're actually almost out of time, but if anyone has any last minute thoughts or questions, we would really love to know what your thoughts are on community building, what you're seeing in your own communities, that kind of thing.
And you can certainly reach out to us on our Slack channel afterwards, slack.bevnet.com, if you want to continue any of this conversation.
Let's see, my next question is for Michelle.
Michelle, there was actually a BevNET article that Adrienne DeLuca wrote, where you were talking about brand evolution in the competitive set.
I thought one of your quotes was very interesting.
You said that you have to be both timely and timeless.
And I think that's where community comes in.
Could you expand on that?
I thought that was fascinating.
Sure.
Having grown up with big brands, right?
Whether it was Nautica or Victoria's Secret, I saw how important it was for brands to be timeless, right?
And so I thought that is all branding is.
But then as you saw them start to peak and then kind of fall from the top of the tower, I was like, well, why?
What happened?
They forgot about being timely.
And so when I was at Victoria's Secret, I remember this one statistic that always used to stick with me.
When I would look at our top five styles that drove an exorbitant amount of our volume, they launched in 1998 and it was 2011.
And I was like, hold on.
So, so many of these brands have gotten away with their top styles, the things that they're known for, they can just stick to it, right?
Because shareholder meeting after shareholder meeting, those are the things that statistically are what's driving the organization.
However, the introduction of social media, in my opinion, changed everything.
Things have moved much faster in society.
I'll use athleisure as an example.
Remember when Lululemon first started, like leggings were not a thing and the word athleisure didn't even exist.
Now it's like a household name and you wear leggings more often than you wear actual clothes, right?
And so society shifted very quickly, but brands don't.
You can build a brand that is timeless and timely, meaning it doesn't matter when you see the brand, you always see that logo, Nike, just do it.
Nike doesn't sell the same thing every year.
They're timely as well.
And they're using their audience, they're using social media, they're using all these tactics and tools to make sure that yes, they will always be just do it, but what they sell and how they do it will evolve.
What's some of the most valuable information you've learned from your community recently?
It may shape what your next product launch might be, it might shape packaging.
What's some of the most recent specific information that you've been able to get from your surrounding community?
For me, the most interesting one is permission to break the rules.
Like when we first launched Gorgie, the packaging, people were always like, you have to have fruit on your can.
Turns out we don't.
You can't have people on a can.
Turns out we can.
There's all these things that you can do and you can't do, but actually your community gives you the confidence to have permission to say, well, I'm going to try.
I don't know that this has come up yet in Gorgie, but I'm sure you've both seen it in your past lives.
What do you do when your audience starts to plateau?
So, you have a high period of growth and then you sort of notice, maybe you're adding a few users or a few members.
What do you do to take it to the next level and start growing again?
For me, I think that most people think of community as digital and what I find is you have to get out there and deliver on the physical.
And so that is the hardest part, but actually they can be super small activations.
It could be a dozen people, it could be 24 people, et cetera.
It doesn't have to be this like overdone production.
But when you do that, you learn what people are thinking about and what's top of mind for them.
And so, and then you activate upon that.
So like even for Lively, when we had our first community event, it was the happiest thing.
We put it on Instagram.
We're like, come to our corporate office for a happy hour.
And, you know, 40 women showed up.
But what I did was I listened to what they were talking about.
And at that time in 2016, they were talking about soul cycle and succulents.
I was like, got it.
So I'm gonna deliver events on soul cycle and succulents, right?
But if you just get a couple people together, you'll hear like what it is they're interested in.
And then you go out and deliver on that.
Did you say succulents?
Oh yeah, like the sill.
Has anyone heard of the sill?
Succulents are like the best, especially when you were in New York City and you wanted greenery in your house.
How do you combine soul cycle?
Now I'm going down the rabbit hole, but how do you combine succulents and soul cycle?
Right, well, how do you even combine bras and soul cycle?
That is the key ingredient, is people are so focused on selling their product, they're not focused on creating the brand.
And so that is huge for Lively.
I was like, you are not allowed to talk about bras at our events.
We are going to create events that create a euphoric moment.
Currently, people find euphoria around succulents, and then we're going to create a euphoric moment around soul cycle.
That's also where they find fun.
And then what happens is they're like, I had the best time at this succulent event.
It was so much fun.
Also, thank you, Lively.
And then people are like, who's Lively?
I had the best ride at soul cycle.
Thank you, Lively.
Who's Lively?
Gorgie just had the best event on this boat.
Gorgie just had the best activation at Ard Basel.
The drink isn't mentioned.
People are like, wait, who's Gorgie?
You're creating a human soul, in theory, that people want to get to know.
And it all goes back to providing that value prop.
And that can be almost anything, but the most powerful one is if they have this, as Michelle's saying, euphoric.
I use the word surprise and delight.
So it's like these types of experiences that are so above and beyond what they're expecting.
And when you do plateau, it usually means that you haven't actually been providing enough of those opportunities.
Because when you do, then people go and they tell five, 10 friends.
And it's actually, there's like statistical evidence through studies that if somebody has a really positive experience with you, they'll go and they'll tell between seven to 12 individuals.
And when you look at customer service, if somebody had a bad experience, but you turned it into a good experience, they actually are a stronger boost to your net promoter score than people who just had the positive experience in the beginning.
So it's like never too late for you to start surprising and delighting your community and your audience base.
And it can be something as easy as Michelle was saying, like invite them to a happy hour, send them a bunch of succulents.
You know somebody at SoulCycle, like go ask your teacher at your SoulCycle class if you can bring people in.
Or one of the things that we did when we launched our new flavors is we put together these super cute little individual boxes with some little gifts from our brand friendlies and just surprised and sent them out to 300 people in our community who maybe have like, we haven't been top of mind or they needed a little bit more retention or they've just been new and they're really excited.
Every, I think we've so far, we have like 60% of the people who receive boxes posted on social media.
And then their friends have now started filling things in.
So like our ambassador form grows significantly.
The amount of people in Geneva grows significantly.
Follower base engagement, like all of the KPIs and metrics that you're looking at and like sitting behind your computer freaking out about actually come from these really nice fun moments.
And so you don't need to be like stressing out over your ad performance.
You can just do something fun and creative.
And if you're having fun, it's highly likely that the people on the other end will be having fun too.
My great piece of advice for people building brands is just be human about it.
It seems silly, but like why do we use disco balls everywhere we go and attach to our branding?
Because I can't find one human that will not smile when they see a disco ball.
Like show one person that doesn't upgrade a disco ball to fun.
We also have ice luges.
Why?
Why not?
You know, things that are just like unexpected, but also can create a connection, always a win.
And it can be cheap.
Like it doesn't need to be expensive, right?
Ice luges, people think are super expensive.
They're not that expensive.
And our favorite IG live that the community loved and they rewatch and they send to everyone is an IG live that we did where we told embarrassing and funny stories from the early days of Gorgie, right?
Like it had nothing to do with our flavors or the drink itself or like our new launch or talking about anything that traditional brands blast from their social media accounts.
Instead, it was like Michelle and I talking about when we were laughing so hard, we were crying because I spilled ice and water literally all over myself before a huge event that I was wearing like a silk gown for.
So, I mean, these types of things are just hilarious.
And then everybody feels like they're bought into the brand.
They know us as humans, and they feel like they're supporting their friends' company instead of it being some company that's built somewhere in, again, an ivory tower that they have no experience with.
One last question for both of you, if I might.
There are so many founders who they've already created the product.
They've launched their brand.
What's your best advice in a nutshell for those founders who are looking to build a community and maybe even start building a community around the product that they have in market?
It's never too late, right?
You can always start from square one.
Even if you have a great influencer program or you have a great social media following, just go and ask them why they like you.
And then you'll get some really valuable information that's probably not even about your product and is more about your ethos or the life experiences or the occasions and moments in their life that they use your product.
And then it's really easy for you to start kind of piecemeal, puzzle piecing these opportunities together to build some of that community around it.
So I don't necessarily think that you need to be community built to be community led, and I think that those can kind of coexist.
I would say also pack the snowball tight, right?
And so a community will eventually start to roll down the hill and build quickly if it's strong and it has the right ethos and momentum behind it, but that only starts when you pack the snowball really tight.
And I say that in meaning you spend the time to find the people that care the most and don't think about the number of people in the community, think about the right people in the community.
And if you start that way, pack it super tight, don't rush, spend the time, then you'll know the inflection point on when the ball should fall down the hill.
Great, great advice.
Thank you both so much for joining today.
Michelle Cordeiro Grant and Madi Lieber of Gorgie.
What's the best way for folks to get in touch with you after this show?
getgorgie.com, LinkedIn, Instagram.
I mean, we're pretty active, as I'm sure you've gathered, across almost all of the platforms.
And so we'll stay pretty up to date.
I also think that we'll be spending some intentional time checking the LinkedIn posts and the BevNET Community Slack to see if there's any additional questions or things we can follow up and be helpful on.
And I would say, I mean, we're both super open.
I think Michelle and I each probably, Michelle more than me, but we take between five to ten meetings with outside people, brands, friends, people who just have questions or that we could potentially help with.
And so it's really rewarding for us to be able to have these conversations.
We're obviously very passionate about it.
So you're never bothering us if you reach out.
And we will see you next time.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That concludes another episode of the Community Call Podcast.
If you've enjoyed this show, please give us a review and follow us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice.
To join Community Call live on Zoom, go to bevnet.com/communitycall to see what's coming up and register for upcoming shows.
And don't forget to join our BevNET, NOSH and Brew Bound Slack Community at slack.bevnet.com.
Thank you
