Hey, everyone, welcome to Community Call the Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community at BevNET & NOSH, here with Jackie Brugliera, Director of Marketing and co-host of Taste Radio.
Hi, Jackie.
Hey, Melissa, this is so fun.
So much fun.
We are, of course, very excited still about turning Community Call into a podcast.
This is our third episode, and we are really racking up the Community Call as a podcast episodes, aren't we?
Yeah, we are.
And I know that I've been sitting in on most of your Community Calls that you've hosted over the last seven months, and they've been pretty awesome.
And I'm pretty excited that you chose to do this as a podcast.
It just makes so much sense to reach a larger audience, reach people that might not be watching video.
They are a chronic multitasker like myself, and just want to have that in the background or listening to it on a jog.
So I think it's really smart, and I'm excited for your insights and your experts to reach more people.
You know, it's been such a pleasure finding some of the smartest people in the industry.
And you know, there are a lot of folks who fly under the radar.
They're putting in the work, and it's a lot of work, and it really has been such a pleasure talking to different folks in the community, finding out which people make the most sense for which issues that we're tackling.
And certainly this C4 episode that we did, C4, of course, of Nutrabolt, was an example of that.
Mari Lee and Katie Geyer are two of the smartest women that I've had the pleasure of chatting with.
I clearly remember that episode because they both were so well spoken.
They were just giving back to back actionable insights.
But also, I don't know, they provided a very great strategic mindset, as well as how do you take that strategy and actually implement it, which I think sometimes there's a disconnect there.
Absolutely.
There are two people who are still fully in the trenches, but they've had so much experience and so much great experience that they can give that really great combination of tactical advice with experienced high-level strategy.
Yeah, and I guess my question for you, Melissa, is why did you choose this episode?
It really was that.
So when I was going through to pull clips from this episode for social media, it was really difficult.
I mean, I had to narrow down.
I think from each of them, I had four clips that contained such great gold nuggets of wisdom that it was very clear that this should be an episode that we release as a podcast right off the bat.
Because again, they're giving information that brands can take and then immediately put it into action.
Yeah.
And I think the topic is also super timely.
I know we've been a couple years kind of removed from the pandemic.
I mean, COVID still floating around, but everyone's back into event mode full force and talking about events and how you think about them strategically and how you have the support on the ground as well as within the market is very important rather than just buying into a local event because it seems convenient, actually thinking about it as a larger strategy.
Absolutely.
There are a number of brands who perhaps haven't participated in an event because they launched during the pandemic.
The way that these women described events, I thought made so much sense, they talked about events and experiential marketing is an opportunity to have an interactive conversation with your consumer because so much of marketing is just sending information without getting anything back.
But this is truly an opportunity to have a dialogue with your consumers.
Yeah, and they also talked about how closely marketing and sales are aligned on these events.
You want to have a event in a marketplace where you do have distribution and where you do have sales buy-in.
So just a couple of things, a little tidbits and sneak peeks into the episode.
We're just dangling the organic, free range, regeneratively grown carrots.
That's all.
Sounds super tasty, I want more.
Me too, me too.
We want these community calls to be as helpful as possible.
So please do get in touch, tell us about topics you think that we should cover, or if you're a founder or you work for a brand and you're dealing with a specific issue that you like us to call in the big dogs to and have a roundtable discussion and kind of brainstorm together, we'd love to hear from you as well.
The best way to get in touch with us would be our Slack community, slack.bevnet.com, or you can shoot me an email at mtraverse, T-R-A-V-E-R-S-E at bevnet.com, and we'll get in touch.
Yeah, Melissa loves flipping the script.
A couple episodes, she's brought in someone that reached out on Slack, had a big issue or a big question.
She didn't necessarily have the best answer and brought in the experts to actually answer the questions live so everyone could watch and also bring their own questions.
And I know Vasa from Perfee participated as well as Elise from Bad Tico, and they came in with questions about multipacks and influencer marketing and were able to talk to hard-to-reach experts.
There's so many benefits to doing it that way for sure.
Not only do you get the pleasure of helping someone in real time, but you're also getting some extra exposure as an emerging brand.
And the information that's being given, it can be even more specific and helpful because it's being given in real time.
This business changes so frequently that to be able to have somebody who's working through an issue and then somebody who's got lots of experience and has some great ideas on how to tackle it, it really provides some actionable advice that so many folks can take advantage of.
As the industry evolves and continues to change, more Community Calls will be coming out, answering more questions that are relevant in a year from now.
So make sure that you like and subscribe the podcast on your streaming platform of choice so that you get notified every time we release a new episode with new timely insights.
You got it, Jackie.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Well, let's get right to it.
Folks, we hope you enjoy this Community Call episode with C4 talking about event and experiential marketing.
Do you have a recent product launch, new hire, marketing campaign, distribution news, or some other exciting company announcement?
Let us know.
With our new self-service PR portal, submitting your news is easier than ever.
Just head to submit.bevnet.com to get started.
Hello, and thank you so much for joining us today.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, welcoming you to Community Call.
Please join in the conversation.
Throw any questions that you have right in the chat, or you can turn on your video and audio and join us live to talk.
Today, we will be talking about field and experiential marketing and how they support event activations.
We've got Mari Lee and Katie Geyer of Nutrabolt.
Nutrabolt's portfolio includes three beverage brands, C4, Cellucor, and Xtend.
Mari Lee, thank you so much for joining us.
Mari is the VP of commercial marketing at Nutrabolt.
Her background includes marketing leadership roles at Glaceau, Kind, Hybru Coffee.
Mari, can you explain a little bit about what commercial marketing is and what your role is at Nutrabolt?
Thanks, Melissa.
Happy to be here.
Yes, I am the VP of commercial marketing.
I live in our commercial org and report to our chief revenue officer.
In this role, I oversee our trade shopper and field marketing.
Excellent.
Katie Geyer, thank you so much for joining us today.
Katie is the VP of partnerships and experiential marketing.
Katie came to Nutrabolt with comprehensive experience, running 360 degree experiential and in-market activation programs with an agency background.
Katie, can you talk a little bit about what you do at Nutrabolt?
Hi, everyone.
Thanks so much for having me.
Katie Geyer, VP of partnerships and experiential.
At Nutrabolt, within my team includes three verticals, talent, experiential and partnerships.
And I sit under our brand marketing organization, reporting to our CMO and closely partnering with Mari and the commercial team.
Fantastic.
As we were getting ready for this call, we spent a good amount of time talking a little bit about field marketing and experiential marketing.
Could we first dive into those two topics and talk about what they are separately, and then also how they converge at Nutrabolt and how Nutrabolt puts those two pieces together for event activations?
Yeah, I'm happy to jump in on that one.
I think the terminologies between field marketing, experiential marketing often are treated interchangeably.
Here at Nutrabolt, we treat them a little bit differently.
And like I mentioned earlier, I oversee our field marketing.
And as I mentioned also earlier, I roll up into our commercial organization, and that's not an accident.
The way we treat field marketing at Nutrabolt is community-driven field marketing.
It is occasion sampling, right place, right time, opportunistic sampling, it's local events, and it's also retail demos.
And the reason we roll up into the commercial organization is this is all very closely wired to our sales organization.
So our field marketing not only is very locally driven, but they're also wired to our sales team, as well as our distributors and our local accounts to ensure that that activity that we're doing is converting trial to purchase.
What does that relationship with your sales team look like?
Because I think that's a really important point.
And this is something that is somewhat unique to Nutrabolt where your marketing teams and your sales team, if you could talk about that relationship, that'd be great.
I'm actually thrilled that you asked that because I think the key to strong field marketing is close wiring with sales.
Field sales with the folks who are servicing stores, but also national accounts and understanding what activity is happening.
So we encourage all of our field marketing folks to make sure they're wired with their sales counterparts.
So they know areas of opportunity, they know where the strong retailers are so we can support them further.
They know the most important routes that our distributors are running.
That knowledge is gonna empower them to be so much more effective in what they're doing day in and day out.
And then from an experiential standpoint, I mean, I can tell you a little bit, Katie is the expert here, but to articulate from where I stand, field marketing is the more localized sales wired marketing and you look too experiential.
It lives in the marketing org for a reason.
This is an awareness driver.
This is where we deploy the expertise on Katie's team and bring in some outside support to create these massive events that really make an impression on the consumer.
Some have many attendees, some do not, and we coin those as seen by many, but experienced by few in person.
So it really is about making it feel big and being able to scale it on a larger level.
And Katie, I'm probably hardly doing it justice for you, but I think that there's just a nice balance between the localized field and then the scalable national experiential.
Yeah, for sure.
And our situation is unique in that Mari and I work together every single day, but technically we're under different verticals and departments, and that's by design.
When we think about how to divvy up our work, experiential marketing really ladders up to our brand marketing goals.
So things like brand awareness, net promoter score, brand affinity, and of course, all laddering into household penetration and making C4 a household name.
So when we look at an experiential event, we're really looking at how do we use this event to drive earned and owned social media?
How do we get PR impressions out of it?
And sampling is usually a secondary KPI, whereas usually from Mari's perspective, sampling is a primary KPI.
So usually when it comes into our world, that's how we decide where it should land.
We're here to talk about events.
The events weren't really a thing for the last few years.
And I think a lot of folks are in a position where they're wondering, do I need to do events?
How many do I need to do?
How much of this should I bring back?
And I think a lot of folks are looking at the return on past events and wondering what to do next.
Could you explain a little bit about what your event goals are when you're assessing whether or not to participate in something, whether it's worth it?
What are your goals when you're heading into an event?
And I know that those can sort of vary a little bit depending on what the event itself is.
Yeah, they can vary.
I can start from kind of a decision tree from an experiential standpoint.
So when something comes our way that is a larger experiential partnership, we really start with like five key pieces.
So one is do they line up with our brand strategy?
We have brand goals on our side from a strategy standpoint of who we wanna be.
We wanna be athletic, we wanna be cool, we wanna be innovative, we wanna be lifestyle, we wanna be confident.
And so we have to ensure that any event that we're aligning ourselves with is expressing those values.
The second we look at, do they hit our target graphic?
So it can be the most amazing event in the world, but if the consumer isn't a big energy drink consumer for us at C4, then it would fall flat.
So we need to look at, do they align with our current demo or a demo we're trying to reach?
And is this a demographic in which they overindex an energy drink consumption, or we have reason to believe that we'll be able to convert them?
The third thing we look at is the market.
They need to be in a market the event needs to be, or the event attendees need to be in a market in which we're well distributed.
And this is where it's really important that we partner closely with the commercial team.
If we are in a place where we cannot walk into a store and find C4 after the event, we're falling short because we want to make sure that what we're able to do on site ultimately converts in retail.
So we have to make sure we're somewhere where we're well distributed and it's a strong market for us.
Fourth, we look at the commercial opportunity.
So this is where Mari and I work together to ensure that what we're doing on the experiential side also has like a shopper and a trade extension.
Is there something we can do from a point of sale perspective?
Is there something we can do in retail?
Is there someone we can host?
Is there an experience in which we can bring top salespeople, we can host buyers, we can bring distributors?
That's all really valuable from an event standpoint and just being able to be in person and face to face with people at a very special occasion.
And then fifth, we look at the scalability.
So this is what Mari and I were starting to talk about, like from a scale standpoint, our team mantra has been experienced by a few, seen by many, experiential.
Sometimes I think people look at it and they think that's a lot of money to spend on 5,000 samples or sometimes even smaller.
Sometimes we'll do events where we only host 500 people, but you have to look at the scale of it.
So we're always looking at, is there a larger story we can tell?
Can we get PR out of this event?
Can we get a ton of social posts out of it?
Can we get content for ourselves out of it?
Instead of a production day, can we get all of our content from this event?
So there's just a lot of ways to look at it from a scalability.
Those are kind of the first five things we look at.
And if the answer is yes, yes, yes across the board, then we start to dive into some of the specifics around budget, around venue considerations, and just execution.
But that's where we start, usually in our decision tree.
Experienced by few, seen by many is a really important point and one I want to reiterate here.
Can you give us an example of an event that was just that?
Perhaps it wasn't experienced by hordes of people, but the ripple effect was so significant that it was a really big hit for Nutrabolt.
Yeah, well, this is actually very topical.
So last week, a large group of us were out in LA.
You may have seen, we had a great BevNET article about it, but C4 is the official energy drink of summer, and this is our summer campaign.
And so we wanted to host a big event to kick off summer correct and to really put our stake in the ground around this claim.
We rented out a beautiful space in Beverly Hills last Thursday night, June 1st, and we invited top partners, content creators, influencers, and key people out.
So there were about 300 people at the event, but the reach beyond the event was 44 million.
So that is something where it really hit the nail on the head from experience by a few, seen by many.
We were able to get Us Weekly and People PR hits out of it.
We were able to have so many amazing content creators in one space that they were sharing this all on their social channels.
So we had that earned reach of 44 million.
We also saw a spike overnight of our event on social from people searching our hashtag and looking for C4.
So it was working.
Basically everyone that came to the party was then influencing their own communities and talking about the event, which was really what we wanted to happen.
And then from a secondary KPI standpoint for that event, we wanted to get almost a summer's worth of content out of it, which we did.
We went and we were able to have ton of photographers, videographers, people on site, engaging, chatting, getting to know one another and getting great content that we can use on our social and digital channels throughout the summer.
So that's a great example of it was a small group, but a really impactful event with residual impact for the summer.
And were those numbers anticipated when you were, kind of working through your decision tree, figuring out whether to do this and how to do it, was that anticipated or did you hit over and above what your projections were?
We set a KPI for 20 million.
We doubled it.
So we were pretty pleased, but it was one of the first events we've ever done as that kind.
So now we have a new benchmark that we'll have to exceed on the next one.
So we've talked a little bit about owned versus earned events.
Can we talk a little bit about what that means and what the differences are between those two kinds of events are?
Sure, yeah.
So the one I just spoke about that was an owned event.
We created that soup to nuts.
We did everything to get people to our event.
And it was, I mean, you could not miss C4 if you were there.
You knew it was a C4 event.
Sometimes we call the owned events more like hugging your consumer.
Usually a person that's coming to an owned event at least has a familiarity with C4.
The flip side or an event, or I call them more event sponsorships, is when you're aligning yourself with a brand or property or a team in which you want to get their consumer.
You wanna be cool by association or connect yourself with them to reach their fan base.
So a great example of that is our partnership with WWE.
So we are a WWE partner and we will be activating at a big way at Ford Field this year for SummerSlam August 5th.
And in this instance, we are working with the WWE to be a partner on site.
So we're an event sponsor.
So this is the instance where we'll be there with others, but we're tapping into that WWE fan base.
We happen to know that WWE fans consume more energy drinks than any other professional sport, and that they over index an energy drink by two thirds.
So we wanna be where we know our consumers will be and people that we think we can convert.
In this instance, we partner with the WWE to determine what we can do on site.
So all of their partners will have a certain event space that they can activate, and then we'll be there sampling, engaging with the consumer, and having that one-to-one experiential interaction.
So that's the difference between owned and event sponsorships.
And do you typically have a breakdown between the number of owned and the number of earned that you're looking to do every year, or is it just as the events come up, you make the decision?
It's a little bit of both, but I would say about 25% we do on our own, produce on our own, and 75% are through our event partnerships.
It can get, I mean, just to be honest, it can get quite pricey to do your own event.
Like you are building everything from start to finish, and you have to make sure that you get people there.
Whereas you're partnering with an event sponsorship, you're essentially plugging in to the advertising and the outreach that they're already doing.
Like people are already coming to SummerSlam and we're gonna be there.
So it's a little bit of fish where the fish are.
Whereas when you're doing your own event, it's your job to not only produce the event, but then to get everyone to come and be the media arm for that as well.
When you were talking through a little bit about the decision tree that you use in order to figure out whether or not to do an event, you talked about distribution, which certainly makes a lot of sense, making sure that you have good distribution in the area.
Something that also came up as we were preparing for this call was choosing markets in terms of CDI, so Category Development Index, versus BDI, Brand Development Index.
Could you talk about what the difference is between those two and how you use those two factors to figure out what your event strategy is?
I'm happy to jump in on that one.
I think Katie really eloquently upfront talked about from a brand standpoint, how we're choosing the events that we're doing.
From a BDI perspective, excuse me, that is a little more applicable to what we're doing from a field marketing perspective.
So knowing what the category is doing and how it's indexing as well as the brand is gonna inform our decision making and how we place permanent staff in a market.
That coupled with the strength of a distributor as well as retail opportunities, they all pretty much go hand in hand.
Where we have strong retail, we typically have strong distributors and therefore the category and the brand indexes are typically high and that will help us inform where we're putting staff permanently in field marketing's case or in Katie's world with experiential where we're choosing to do our events and typically they correspond.
John Hardesty wants you to know that you're both rock stars.
Thank you, John.
We think he's a rock star too.
John's the rock star, really.
So we've talked through a little bit about what you look at when you're trying to figure out which events to do.
After you've done the events, what are the KPIs that you're using to figure out whether or not it was a success, whether or not to repeat it, and if you do repeat it, how you might want to change your activation, or it was so successful that you'd like to do it again the same exact way.
How are you looking at these as rating them for success?
I can speak about it from a larger event perspective in the market.
If there's anything on the field side, as you think about going back to certain markets.
And so I think the LA event or some of the KPIs that I was sharing are a great example.
So we look at impressions.
We look at impressions on a PR standpoint.
We look at PR impressions on a social standpoint.
We look at earned media value.
We also watch social sentiment and see what people are commenting, saying, are they engaging with us?
Are they excited?
Do we see any lift in our follower count?
We look at any SEO jump.
So we can see if people search C4 Energy throughout the time that we are activating, both on social channels as well as on Google search.
And then we also look at local sales velocity.
So this one takes a little bit longer to measure, but a great example of this is we were the official energy drink of South by Southwest, which is in our hometown of Austin, Texas.
And we sampled in conjunction with Mari's field team over 150,000 cans over 10 days.
So it was a massive lift in Austin.
And so we wanted to look back and see if we saw a sales velocity jump with our key partners.
And so we were able to measure that over a four week period and actually show an increase in velocity.
So that really showed us that we made an impact in the market.
So when you do an event that's large enough on that scale, you can come back and see if there's any lift.
And then also from a sampling perspective, I'll kind of turn it over to Mari to speak about this, but we're such a highly experiential brand.
And I imagine for many people on this call that are, you know, beverage in itself, you kind of have to try it.
And we believe if you try us, you'll come back.
We believe we're the best tasting energy drink out there.
And we believe that our dosages are highly efficacious.
So we want people to try and sample our products and believe that is a true KPI also, because the hope is that they'll return and become a consumer.
And I'll just jump in on that and say that field marketing, experiential marketing, it's all about connecting with the consumer in person.
And to Katie's point, getting an ice cold sample into the consumer's hand, letting them taste one, how awesome it is, and two, while they're drinking it, to inform them about the efficacy, what the makeup is of this product.
And then by the way, letting them know where they can purchase it, it's the perfect combination.
We believe in our product.
We think it's the best energy drink on the market.
And although we find that disrupting the consumer in store is a tremendous way to reach them, there's nothing better than getting them in that point of need when they could utilize a little more energy, giving it to them ice cold, and helping them understand why and where to purchase it.
At this point, I'm sure that C4 and Nutrabolt, you have this down to an exact science, but especially for emerging brands out there, what's the best way to drive engagement at events?
So you've invested the money in the product, in the team, in the activation.
How do you make sure that you're drawing an audience to make the most of that activation?
I'll start with a couple of things.
I think one thing, and I think you'll agree with this Mari, that is so important that people overlook is really good brand ambassadors.
And sometimes we even bring our influencers there to engage with the consumer.
So why experiential and field marketing work is it is a true human connection.
It is a one-to-one interaction.
Every other type of marketing is the brand talking to the person.
It is a one-way street.
There's no dialogue back.
And so with that, you're constantly just getting pinged, pinged, pinged, but when you're with experiential and field marketing, you're having a true emotional connection with your consumer.
It's the same reason why everyone in sales wants to land that meeting in person.
Like nothing can replicate the in-person experience.
So your brand ambassadors, your influencers, your field marketing managers, those people, they are an expression of your brand.
That is what someone will remember.
So having people that are not only highly trained on what the product is, the benefits can answer any questions, but also are just like warm and friendly and inviting and expressive and like represent everything you wanna be as a brand is really, really important because people will remember that emotion, that touch point, that conversation.
And that is something where you can really make a big impact in that one-to-one interaction.
And I'll just jump in and say that knowing who you are as a brand and what your targets are critical.
So if you identify that the area that you wanna own is yoga, then I highly recommend that you seek out brand ambassadors who are passionate about yoga.
Maybe they're yoga instructors, which allows for some free time.
So let's take that person who's a yoga instructor and bring them over to be a brand ambassador.
It's authentic, they're passionate, and they're users.
And that's not just for yoga.
It's CrossFit, it's climbing, it's music, it's all the passion points.
And so it really is important to understand who you are as a brand and who you're targeting, because then you can bring in brand ambassadors to really represent properly.
But what I think Katie said subtly and I hope everyone listens to is that engagement, it doesn't need to be buying the consumer.
The individuals are the best way to do it.
Our product plus the right team sampling it is the best engagement you could have.
My team who works with me knows I just, I don't love what we call swag.
I think giveaways is just cheap in the experience.
There's nothing better than the right people with the right product engaging with consumers.
That's the kind of advice that when you say it out loud, it seems so simple and it seems so obvious, but it's so important and it's such a good point.
So thank you for sharing that.
John Hardesty has a question.
For smaller brands starting to plan their experiential strategies, do you recommend starting by building a team in-house or have you used external resources in order to execute those events sooner before you've grown as a brand?
From experiential in particular, I think having one person internally who has the knowledge, i.e.
a Katie, but typically in this area, bringing in external help I think is really important.
You don't necessarily want to own all that infrastructure and carry all the burden of permitting and finding multiple vendors for different items.
So experiential is quite complex.
And I think bringing in external support under the leadership of one internal expert is the way to go there.
Conversely, I will say on field marketing, I'm a strong advocate for having that in-house.
I think that to the earlier points about strong brand ambassadors, you want to pick your talent.
You want them to be really well-informed and ideally working for your company if possible.
I know we're here talking about event activations, but I'm just curious.
When you think about in-store samplings or on-premise samplings, what's your strategy there?
Do you typically have your own brand ambassadors in those stores, or do you hire externally?
And also, I'd like to know if that's a decision you were only able to make as Nutrabolt has grown.
So who are you sending into stores?
So typically, we will send our staff, and wherever possible, we'll send our own people in.
However, there's some retailers who will not allow that.
So if it's possible, we'll send our folks in, and we try to be really precise about where and when.
We know that convenience stores index really well in energy consumption during that morning timeframe.
So you wouldn't typically think about doing a demo at 6 a.m., but a convenience store makes a lot of sense.
So our key timeframe for a convenience store demo, we park ourselves outside the store with a table, and we sample from 6 to 8 or 9 a.m., whereas in a grocery store, the timeframe is going to look a little different.
Typically, that person's not going to consume the product in that moment or anytime soon.
So you're reaching them with the idea that they're going to be consuming it at a later time.
And in that point, with a grocery store, you want to be sampling during the higher traffic times.
Tony Miano says that you are both genuine, passionate and educated brand ambassadors are so critical, and no one does it better than C4.
So lots of compliments here.
Thank you, Tony.
Could you talk a little bit about some of the, maybe even some of the smaller niche events that you found to be effective?
So South by Southwest, WWE, so cool, and I think aspirational for so many brands.
What are some examples of some opportunities that might be more available to emerging brands but still would be really, really great in building a core customer base and building that connection?
Yeah, I can start, and then Mari maybe share some of the events the field team looks for.
But I think it doesn't have to be this big, sexy event for you to be impactful.
And I think another thing, this is a little bit off topic, but I think it's relevant.
I think when people are often approached by those events, they look at an initial price tag and they're like, there's no way, I can't afford that.
My branch isn't there.
And what I would say is, tell that person your budget and see if they'll work with you.
Because there's a lot of times where those, the guy or the girl that's reaching out, that's pitching a sponsorship level to you, of course they're gonna come in with like their highest possible, like co-presenting sponsorship, but there's usually a lot of opportunities to mine for.
Ask if you can, do you have an exhibit or a relationship?
Do you have something where I can just pay 10K to be on site?
Do you take in kind donations?
If you're a private brand, is there something you can do that's like a rev share model or an equity model, or is there something you can do creative if you're a brand that like is expecting to be extremely high growth?
Can you do what we call an escalator where you do a three-year deal and maybe you come in the first year at 50K and then it goes up so that you show them there's like a longevity partnership.
If there's something that you really want to do in an event space, like don't be turned away just by thinking like, I'm probably not there yet, because usually if you're extremely transparent about your budget and your KPIs, there's a way and the brands align, there's usually a way to get something done.
So I would say that about the big events.
Like don't feel like you have to turn away, just to help people like what you have to work with.
And a lot of times they'll work with you.
And what most of us have on this call is a product that people want to try and drink and use.
And so you actually have something that you can give through your product.
Another idea is you can do a lot of guerrilla sampling.
So like, for example, you don't have to be like, let's use a South by Southwest example.
You don't have to be the official energy drink partner to sample in Austin during the month of March.
You don't have to be the partner at ACL to sample in Austin during the month of October.
So think of when key events are happening in the markets that you want to be in.
And of course, you're not gonna be able to go to that event space, but you can be in the area.
Like where are those people going?
What bars are they at?
What restaurants are they at?
What hotels are they at?
Are they at some of your retail partners?
Like that's a key time to sample to the demographic and be there by association without actually being a partner.
And then the last thing I would say is consider, like back to fishing where the fish are, consider like the moments of occasion for your brand and then try to just show up and partner on those boutique levels.
So if you are a performance product, a lot of things that we used to do from a C4 standpoint before the brand grew is we would be just like at a lot of gyms, a lot of boutique studios, we would do a lot of gym sampling.
We would go to local strength and conditioning events, local CrossFit events, and we would go to these events and we would sample there.
So go meet your consumer at their needs date and sample at those events.
And you can often do that with product donations or a very small monetary amount.
So those are kind of my three tactics to think about with a smaller budget.
Brilliant.
And how do you locate some of those smaller events at this point with C4 and Nutrabolt?
You guys have people knocking down your door, asking you to participate in things, but as brands are starting off, what's a good way for them to locate some of these smaller events that might make sense?
Yeah, I think that it goes back to knowing who your brand is, knowing who the target consumer is and having those focal markets.
I think it's really easy to get wrapped up in going in different directions.
You have a team in Chicago and then you get a request from Kansas City, no, stick in Chicago, go deeper where you are.
And then knowing that consumer group, if your community will go back to the yoga example, is yoga, then start building those relationships.
Seed product to local studios, build authentic relationships with these folks.
So when the events come up within those communities, you're the first person they go to, let them know that you're interested.
And to Katie's earlier point, your product typically has value and many times at these localized events, you don't even have to exchange money.
You can bring them value with a free good, bringing somebody a free energy drink that tastes pretty awesome, that's pretty desirable.
So don't undersell yourself.
Which goes back to your earlier point about hiring brand ambassadors who are passionate about the mission are really part of your core demographic.
We have a question from Blake Berman.
How can smaller brands measure the return on their field and experiential marketing efforts on a limited budget, especially if it's primarily sold through retail only?
I'm happy to jump in on that one.
Couple different ways you can do it.
One nice tactic that we'll often deploy is if there's a key retailer in the market that you're really trying to make an impact on, you want to choose opportunities that are near that retailer, but also message to that retailer.
So if we know, for instance, we're in Chicago and we want to impact Juul, the key grocery store, we will pick events that are close by to Juul, but then to every consumer that we sample, we specifically message back to that retailer.
And through IRI data, we can see the influence of that activity and if it pulled through there.
Another tactic would be couponing.
Couponing actually does matter.
And during COVID, people started deploying coupons more regularly, both paper coupons as well as digital and non-traditional coupons like Ibotta and rebate programs.
So you can also utilize that and drive people to specific retailers.
And that can allow for you to see the efficacy of your activity as well.
Is that one of the key factors in how you determine the return on events is using something like a coupon to track retail sales?
It's an indicator for us, but I would say they're more important indicators.
I think we're gonna look at the totality of the brand and the growth in the market.
And we know that coupons don't resonate with every audience.
I do think that they're an important tool, but that's not gonna be the sole indicator of an eventful success.
Is there another sort of trail of breadcrumbs that you're able to monitor outside of couponing?
I mean, I think if we do all those things right, that Katie and I have both been talking about with scaling the message and looking at the uptick in search and looking at the conversions and redemptions with our couponing, ultimately, if done right, we're gonna see the numbers grow, whether it be with a specific retailer or in that market in general.
I have a question from Kierthana.
She wants to know, for earlier startups, so for example, about to launch or just launched, what do you think should be the breakdown of field versus experiential events, or where should the focus be?
I mean, I'm happy to take it because I've started on a number of startup brands.
And Melissa, you mentioned my background, but what wasn't mentioned is that I started at Vitamin Water, and it was sub-million, $20 million in sales, same with Kind Snacks.
So although that might feel like a daunting number, those are pretty big brands, and we were operating pretty scrappy in the early days there.
I think it's important to have you up on field.
This is really at the core of what you do in pounding the pavement, building the brand in local communities is how it's going to grow.
It's also less expensive hiring good staff, leveraging the product to get into those events is how you're going to be able to scale.
Katie said it, but experiential can get quite costly, and you want to do it right.
You want to represent your brand well, and when you start bringing in external talent, that does add up, so you need to be precise, and Katie is just that.
But for the startup brands, I think field is absolutely the right way to go and the best way to scale up.
And the only thing I'd layer on to that, because I agree wholeheartedly with Mari, especially when you're focused on a retail and brick and mortar business, is I think experiential, if you are a true D2C brand, is a good consideration because you're able to drive someone right to your page.
So experiential, you get a lot of residual, like we were talking about earlier with social, with press, with content.
And if your goal is to just like make that moment and kind of, you know, blow up and have a lot of conversation going, and then you can turn around and convert someone with a link, like in their native state when they're already learning about you through scrolling, and then they can just click over and go and purchase your brand.
That's the one time I would say experiential is important, or not, they're both very, very important, but experiential might want to lead because in that instance, you can convert someone in the native state in which they're already learning about your brand.
In terms of successful events versus events that maybe weren't so successful, can you give an example of an event that wasn't as successful as perhaps you had hoped it would be and why, and maybe like, was there something that could have been done better, or was it just sort of a, you know, a fate of failure from the start for whatever reason?
So let's find out the things that flopped, right?
No, we've definitely had our fair share.
I think we try to get it right, you know, 80% of the time.
Like, we're still, even though C4 is an established brand, like, we're still growing and learning, and we still have new sub-lines that are coming out, and we're trying to learn, like, where does our consumer, you know, enjoy us, what are the occasion states, and where are they working and playing?
So sometimes we'll test something out, and we'll try not to spend too much on it, we'll just test it to see.
Last year, about this time, we did an event in Miami.
It was a Comic-Con event, and yeah, it was a total flop.
Really, honestly, we just, we didn't align with that consumer.
We thought that energy would really hit with that consumer.
They're an adjacency to gaming, which tends to be a very crowded space, and we just didn't see the fam pull through that we thought, you know, you do your research, you do your data, but until you show up at the event with your product and see how the people that are there, the attendees, engage with it, you really don't know for 100%.
And I would say if you're doing an event, like even if you're running around, you're busy, take some time just to stand back or sit down and watch the consumer and watch the fan and see, like, are they engaged?
Are they interested?
What are they saying to their friend when they're walking away?
Because that's really important.
Are they taking your drink in there and saying, mm, and continuing on with it?
Are they throwing it in a garbage can?
Like, that's really important to see how people are genuinely engaging.
And then if it goes well, you double down.
If it doesn't, you fail fast and you move on.
Another thing I would say in which we've had key learnings from is just the need to show up very, like, endemically in certain spaces.
So a lot of times, like, brands will show up and they'll bring, like, you know, they'll show up to, like, a gaming event with, like, their field set up from a football tailgate.
And, like, it just totally does not work.
So trying to really learn the audience and the consumer, we had to do this with WWE.
You know, I'll be honest, like, I didn't really truly understand the WWE consumer until I started going to events and seeing how they interact and seeing the fan base and seeing their passion points.
And so our events got much, much better as we learned more about them.
And just trying to be endemic, like, so what do WWE fans love?
They love, like, collectibles.
They love anything that's about the superstars.
You know, they love anything that's any type of upgraded access.
So how do we bring those little touch points into our experience to make it feel like we're here authentically and where we're supposed to be?
So I think that is really important.
And I think the consumer is so smart.
They're so inundated with a million things at events or on socials.
And if you don't show up authentically, they're just gonna walk right by you.
Great stuff.
With that, it appears that we are just about out of time.
In closing, if I could ask you each for closing words of advice, something you've learned, a philosophy about event activations and partnerships, that'd be great to send our guests on their way.
Mari, could we start with you?
Absolutely.
Reiterating what Katie said earlier, but there is nothing like that one-to-one interaction.
We are people who are stuck on our screens constantly.
Through COVID, we lack those interactions.
So any opportunity you can get to have a one-to-one interaction with the consumer, sampling, educating, people are craving experience right now.
So I think this is a tremendous way to build a brand.
I'd say get into the business of making moments.
Think about it less of just being on site and handing out cans, and how do you make an emotional touch point happen?
Humans are emotional beings, and if they can connect with your brand on an emotional level, that's how you move away from transactional to brand affinity.
So start thinking about how am I meeting them in a highly emotive state and making their experience better, and how am I creating a moment?
And then how can I extend that moment, whether it's through social or photography or a giveaway or an upgraded experience or a VIP touch point or something with an influencer, try to get into the business of making moments.
And if you start to think about it like that, the consumer will become a lot more loyal to you.
Great stuff.
Thank you so much, Katie Geyer, Mari Lee.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
If folks have questions after the show, what's the best way to get in touch?
Would that be LinkedIn or is there another way you prefer?
I think LinkedIn is a great place.
Thank you all so much for joining us and we will see you next time.
