Leveraging Influencer Marketing and PR in the Food and Beverage Industry with Bill Southard [Food and Beverage Marketing – Part 4]

Transcripts of Influencer Marketing and Earned Media for Food Brands (Part 4 in the Series)

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Introduction to Influencer Marketing Expert

[0:00] My next guest has been an expert in influencer marketing since before it was a term that marketers were even using. Bill Southard of Southard Communications has been studying and perfecting the craft of communications, particularly for CPG brands, for over 40 years. Many of our viewers weren’t even a glimmer in daddy’s eye 40 years ago.

Meanwhile, Bill was working with Planters Peanuts, Oreos, and some of the largest food and beverage brands on the planet. If you know or have ever met Bill, one thing is obvious.

Building Influence and Trust

[0:26] He’s generous with his time, knowledge, and patience in the pursuit of educating others. Bill goes deep as he and I unpack how to build influence and trust with a consumer that is smarter than ever. Bill and I discuss influencer logistics, management, and selection.

[0:41] Retail sampling, a recurring theme and point of emphasis from several of our food and beverage CPG experts. The concept of a mover market and the power of the early adopter. PR timing, the modern media landscape, paid integrations, and how you too can find your way into the Kelly Ripa show. Shout out to Kelly, who’s from my hometown of Berlin, New Jersey.

Speaking of shout outs, if you know an up-and-coming food and beverage brand, please give us a shout out by sharing this episode with the 10 other episodes we’re releasing specific to food and beverage marketing. Maybe hit subscribe, hit that like button, and comment to give us a little nudge with the YouTube gods.

It really helps. And now buckle up, pay attention, and get out your notepads as Bill Southerd gives us a glimpse how to think like a 40-plus year PR professional. Let’s go.

[1:40] And we’re back with another episode of the Niche Marketing Podcast. I am super excited for today’s interview because I get to pull in one of my favorite agency partners, particularly for all things communications, PR, influencer marketing, Mr. Bill Southard with Southard communications.

[1:59] Bill, so delighted to have you down from New York on the show. How was that?

[2:04] How was that traffic, by the way? It wasn’t bad. Not too bad.

You know, the New Jersey Turnpike is, you know, you always have to navigate that, but I left early enough so that I beat the really early traffic and going back, hopefully I’ll beat the traffic going back, either going through the Lincoln Tower. The challenge going back into New York is you have to decide…

Where you’re at exit 14, whether you take the Lincoln Tunnel or the Georgia-Washington Bridge. And what you’re leaning towards, what are you thinking? The Lincoln, because I live on 69th and Riverside, so the Lincoln is the most direct.

[2:37] But I’ll listen to Windsor, I’ll listen to one of the stations to find out what the traffic is like. Hopefully you don’t have to deal with too many tailgaters on the way down.

You know, there was a huge accident on the BQE this morning when I woke up. I felt so bad for them. They closed the whole BQE. I’m like, oh God, to be stuck in that traffic. Bye.

Well, Bill, before we get into PR, communications, influencer, that type of stuff in food and beverage, tell us a little bit about your agency, yourself, how you got into the space and why our listeners should pay attention to what you have to say today. Perfect. Wow. Great. So hopefully I’ll say some things of interest, but no, John, thanks so much. We’ve known each other for a while. We’ve worked together successfully.

Probably like a decade. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. That’s how fast time goes. But I appreciate it. Pleasure to be here. And for anybody who listens to this, if they have any questions, they can always reach out to me. I got in, you know, a lot of the old-time guys, I’ll call myself an old time PR guy, because I’ve been in the business for, and I cringe every time I say this, 40 years.

[3:40] But I also preface that and say, listen, you know, I started when I was 10. So, you know, but I’ve been doing this for a long time, all of it on the agency side. I went to school for journalism and a lot of the old time PR guys and women, what they went to school for was journalism. And then they realized that there was more money to be made in PR.

And that’s what happened to me. I worked for the Star Ledger, New York Star Ledger, very short period of time. Then got an opportunity to work for a PR agency in New Jersey in Edison. They were doing a lot of industrial and B2B work, industrial bag houses and stuff. And then I was fortunate enough that I lined up with two guys who had just started an agency a couple of years prior to that and got my first opportunity to work in the city. That agency went from.

[4:23] 10 or 12 people when i started to 10 years later we sold we were doing about 20 million in fees we sold it to shanwick who at that time was the largest pr agency in the world right now I stayed through my earn out and then um realized you know what I’m gonna start my own agency brought a couple people with me and started southern communications in the summer of 1994.

Oh, wow next year will be our 30th anniversary wow that’s fantastic congratulations thank you thank you it’s and listen, anybody who says it’s easy is foolish, right? There’s been a lot of peaks and valleys. And one of the things I think is strong relationships with clients that allow you to stay with them and them to stay with you for a long time really, really is the key to kind of getting through those down periods.

So, I started the agency in 94, almost 30 years ago. We’re interesting because we’re very much a generalist agency. As you know, we work across a lot of different industries, a lot of different categories.

[5:20] Mostly on the consumer side, about 80% of our business is consumer marketing, about 20% is corporate B2B. My vision of the agency was, I was with a small agency, grew it into a mid-sized agency, sold it to a large agency. So, I wanted to take the best of all those worlds and say, listen, what do I want from you?

[5:38] And it’s a smaller agency. We’re about 20 people located in New York. It allows me to stay involved with clients. And it allows us to really provide value in terms of having our senior people work on the business. As you know, for most service agencies, it’s guys like you and me that show up and convince them to hire them. And then you never see them again.

That’s exactly right, Bill. Yeah. So as somebody that represents a couple hundred different agencies, you’re absolutely right about that size being really key. And I think it’s interesting that over 25 plus years in the business of Southern Communications, you’ve made the intentional effort to kind of maintain and control the size to continue to keep things manageable, to continue to only be, you know, a layer or so, if not directly working with the client yourself.

So, I think that’s impressive, and I commend you for it. I think I’m a better PR person than I am a businessperson.

[6:29] Yeah. You know what I mean? I enjoy that more. And I think the one last thing I’ll say is, as you know, you know, I’m a firm believer, no matter what category you work in, clients nowadays are looking for agencies to help them build their business. And as you know, it extends beyond the day-to-day tactical execution of what we do, you know, from our experience, you know, helping them in terms of developing a product, naming a product, sourcing a product, building a sales team, and then obviously promoting it.

So that’s really, I think that’s what brands want. They want to know how you can contribute to the health and growth of their business. I can attest to that firsthand. I’ve seen you do that more than just about any other agency we work with. It’s absolutely true.

[7:11] All right, very good. And so, the reason we wanted to have you on this show for this series was because of your extensive background in food and beverage. I know you do a ton of work in the space.

Tell me a little bit, just at a high level, some of the challenges, roadblocks, hurdles that come up with any PR campaign, especially one that might be in the food and beverage space?

[7:36] I think, and you know, interesting, I, for those of you old enough, you know, we worked with, before I even started Southern Oreos, we worked with Harry Blackstone, who was a famous magician back then and did in-store events to kind of, you know, drive awareness around that brand and a bunch of other food brands.

We did Everybody Loves a Nut for Planners, Planners Nuts, which was a great, and it’s when the days when, you know, you could get out and kind of interact and engage with consumers before social media. you. The challenges today, I think there’s a couple, so I’ll go through them pretty quickly. One is the changing landscape.

You know, the landscape back in 10, 12 years ago there was no social media. There were no real influencers, if you will. So, the real focus was on what’s called traditional media, right? And our work is in the earned side. So, we’re not buying ads or whatever. We’re crafting a story and creating opportunities with media outlets lets it find that interesting.

So, you know, you would focus on TV, you would focus on radio, you’d focus on daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, you know, were very influential. And those were the primary ways that you’d reach a consumer, whether it was with a food product, a beverage product, or any other type of product.

As you know, the way that consumers now are consuming information is dramatically different, you know, particularly as you look at millennials and you look at Gen Z’s. I mean, I just saw something the other day that for the first time since Nielsen.

[9:02] Viewership of TV broadcast and cable below 50%.

Changing Media Landscape and Consumers

[9:06] So, you know, the challenge is the landscape has changed. You have social media, you have influencers, you have video content that online, you know, most kids today, they don’t have TV or cables. They stream everything on their computers, right?

Yeah, more fragmented than ever too, right? much more fragmented. But there was, I will tell you one thing. I, for a long time, I’ve always believed that I think brands underestimated consumers. And I think to a large part they could because, hey, we’re going to tell you, we’re going to put out a TV commercial and you’re going to believe what we say.

I think the consumer today is smarter than ever. I think they’re so much more educated. There are so many vehicles for them to research and to find out about products. And in the food space, you know, it’s what are the ingredients? What is the labeling? Is it really organic? Is it really healthy? I mean, that’s a major consideration because we’re really more of a health- focused, health-conscious, you know, economy and consumer than ever before.

So, it’s that landscape. The one last thing I’ll just say, just from a PR-specific perspective, it’s still important to realize the role of each of the communication vehicles. PR is still about brand awareness and credibility.

[10:21] Many brands these days will come to us and say, hey, if I get like five placements in these outlets, will it drive sales? And, you know, we always hope that it will because you’re sending out a message that’s important and can resonate a consumer to take some action.

But at the end of the day, you need a combination of some paid digital, some SEO and PR. That’s the kind of the ideal program. So don’t expect that to hire a PR agency and say, hey, listen, we’ll spend you X amount of dollars a month, you’ll get all this press, and it’s going to automatically translate into online sales or sales at retail.

[10:55] Yeah, you can’t be expecting a direct ROI dollar for dollar for each dollar in yields, Y amount out.

Navigating Audience Dispersion

[11:04] It has to be much more omni-channel and strategic and integrated than that, for sure. Sure. With this dispersion of audience personas across the different platforms, across the different mediums, what’s the key?

I mean, obviously, getting into the different platforms, developing content for each of them, but as someone that’s responsible for the communications, needs to do all of the outreach around it, how do you herd all those cats? How do you juggle that responsibility? You know, I think at the end of the day, I still think it’s about frequency and reach, right?

I think it’s about understanding who your customer is, understanding what the competitive environment is, who you’re competing against, what your point of differentiation is, and then basically putting in place a program where you’re going to hit that consumer with your message as often as possible, right? Right. So, I still, and you know, that’s easier to do with PR than it is with advertising because of the cost efficiencies, but nothing’s guaranteed. Right.

So, I think when you structure a program, I think what we do is we look and we say, okay, how can we generate some frequency, get in, you know, get as much of the message out there as possible to as many people as possible in the most cost-effective way. So, I think that still remains very relevant today.

[12:19] The question I always get asked is, well, you know, what’s the mix? You know, what’s the mix between like traditional media and social media and influencers, et cetera. And I say, what I like to do is take a 360 approach, right? Each of those are valuable in communicating your message.

[12:39] One unto itself, not so much, right? So, and some of it depends on the audience. You know, if you’re, if you’re marketing to like, you know, middle-aged moms, she’s still on Facebook. You’re marketing to a millennial, they’re more likely on Instagram or TikTok and other channels.

So, a lot of it is just really understanding that consumer and basically saying, if I want to reach them as often, as impactfully as possible, I need to use all those channels. I need to use influencers. I need to use traditional media, food and beverage. I’m a big believer now that COVID is kind of behind us is to get back to the traditional media.

[13:15] In-person engagement. You know what I mean? The opportunity, sampling is huge in the food and beverage industry. Getting it into the hands of consumers who may ultimately buy the product, who don’t know about it, is critically important.

In-Store Grocery Engagements

[13:28] A challenge during COVID, obviously, but less so now. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about that in-store grocery, grocer-focused approach to getting it into the hands of the consumer. I know you’ve done a fair amount of that over the years. How do you negotiate those types of engagements?

How do you get a physical presence into a brick and mortar and then, you know, make sure that that’s an effective strategy and not a waste of time? Yeah, it’s more of a challenge, truthfully, than it’s ever been. I just got off a call with a client who got into Walmart, and she said, hey, Bill, so what do we do? And I’m like, you know what? I know Walmart really well.

Getting in-store events are very difficult. Through the salespeople, we can do sampling and then the Walmart’s and the Costcos and those. But I said, what we need to look at is doing something either in the parking lot of Walmart, across the street from Walmart, something that is kind of a standalone, almost like a pop-up that’ll drive them in and then coupon them and drive them into retail.

[14:25] So it’s not as easy as it used to be in terms of navigating that retail landscape, getting people to support you. And it’s hard to scale that truthfully in a lot of cases.

So generally, what we’ll do is we’ll look at like some mover markets. Like what are the big mover markets for this particular product? Define mover market for us, if you could. Markets where you have.

[14:48] There’s early adopters, where you’ll know that people are more inclined to buy that product. So, if you’re looking at like a natural product, for example, right? Which is the talk of, you know, the food industry, you know, you’re going to go to, you’ll go to California, right? Because you’ve got people there that are- Seattle, Portland.

All those markets. So, if you focus activities in those mover markets, that also, most of them tend to be good media markets, right? So, you can begin to build a groundswell of awareness.

And then if you hit the right people, they’ll do your job for you. They’ll promote it through their social channels. And then it should spread across the rest of the country, if you will.

So that’s how we generally approach it from, I think, you know, with food and beverage products, there’s a lot of early stage, really nimble startups. Their challenge is it’s hard to get on shelf. You still have to pay slotting fees. You still have to spend money on marketing, et cetera. But they’re very good at social, most of those. But the key for those early stage, in my opinion, is doing some experiential and doing these in-person sampling opportunities in key markets where the audience is going to be.

[16:00] Okay, great. And then on the flip side of the coin, you’ve got creating.

Utilizing Influencer Marketing

[16:03] groundswell on social media, and that’s where influencer marketing comes in.

So, you know, and, and, you know, I don’t, these days, it’s almost like if I eat a bowl of cereal on social media, I can call myself an influencer, you know, but how do you roll this out across influencers? How do you choose what influencers to work with? And how do you deal with dialoguing with them? I know it can be really hard to, again, herd those cats.

Yeah. I mean, you know, there are a lot of influencers out there, right? And there are a lot of companies now that have found out that, hey, there’s a business in selling influencer lists.

[16:40] That’s like a growing business is where, you know, a company will say, hey, how can I help an agency or brand identify who are the right influencers? influencers. There are databases that we do use, number one. Number two, we use our past experience, like, you know, where we’ve had success and maybe where we haven’t had success.

[16:58] The other thing is, I’ll always encourage my team, look at, so the brands that we aspire to be. Okay, you’re an up, say you’re an early-stage natural food product company. Who do you aspire to be? Who are they working with? What are the influencers that they’re working with and that that they’re relying on.

Because I think being in the company of good companies is going to help your brand. So, we do a lot of investigation and research. We have a pretty stellar base already because we do work, a lot of work in this area. So much work in this space. And some influencers work better on food. Some work better on beverage. Some work better, you know what I mean?

Micro influencers for a lot of brands are more effective. Right. You know what I mean? I mean, the macro, you know, TV advertising, And, you know, the thing with TV advertising was expensive and, you know, maybe half your audience was not your target audience. Same thing with macro influencers, right?

The micro influencers, you know, the ones that really home in on the type of

Effective Influencer Selection

[17:56] product you have are the ones that can be most effective.

So, I’ll give you one quick example. Yeah, please. So, we work with a brand called President Whipped Cream, upscale whipped cream from a company down in France. I like that name. Oh, yeah, it’s great. And it’s a great whipped cream. They have distribution in like four key markets. Like they’re in ShopRite here in the New York.

[18:18] At Titor Harris in DC. But we’ve, from an influencer, so our focus there is how do we create opportunities in those markets and how do we create opportunities with these micro influencers? And we found micro influencers who are pastry chefs or micro influencers who focus on creating great desserts.

And those influencers have been the most beneficial in terms of generating some activity and creating some awareness. Now, there’s a national dessert day coming up in October. So, we have a huge initiative where we’re providing product to these influencers and saying, how about you create recipes around how do you incorporate whipped cream into your dessert for National Dessert Day? Cool.

So, the micro-influencers, and a lot of the micro-influencers you don’t have to pay for, okay, because they have a very targeted but smaller audience. And if you do have to pay, it may be giving them some product to give away through a promotion, or it may be a very minimal spend.

[19:22] But most influencers these days, they want to be paid in one way or the other. So that’s the challenge with dealing with influencers. influencers, is they want to get; they have an audience, and they want to get compensated for allowing that brand to communicate to their audience.

And I guess when you get, when you get to shipping of product, I guess on balance, most companies you work with would rather send the product than money, I would assume. Yes. But then now you’ve got to get them a list of people to ship the product to, and there’s probably this logistical headache of coordinating those shipments.

Yes. Do you usually bring that in house or does the client usually do it? I mean, I mean, that’s gotta be a, again, logistical nightmare to some extent. So, when I started my office, we have, we have, what’s called a product supply closet, and we’d have all the products in there and then we would send them out.

[20:11] COVID hit. Yeah. And you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of, even a lot of traditional media, you know, still working from home, you know what I mean? So, the way that we work at it is we have a system where we have a Google, Google worksheet and my team will basically say, okay, okay, send President’s Whipped Cream to these three influencers at this address.

Just ship it to them. We’re going to communicate with them directly. It takes out the logistical issue with us having to ship it. It saves money too, them shipping it to us, us shipping it to them. So, in 90% of the cases, we’ll have some product in our office for like national media. We have the messenger, something up to like a morning show. But in most cases, we’re dealing directly with the warehouse.

Managing Influencer Marketing Efforts

[20:54] We’ll just say, hey, listen, and send these products out one day, two days, or whatever. What are some of the other challenges or pitfalls or just things to be aware of when it comes to managing an influencer marketing effort?

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Influencer Marketing Dynamics

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[22:13] So on the earned influencer side, right? So, you’re not paying them. Yeah. You don’t have control over the exact language or what they say. Now, most influencers are not going to write a negative review. If they don’t like a product, they’ll let us know. And then we’ll tell the client that they don’t like the product for A, A, B, C, and D.

If they like the product, generally they’ll do a positive review, but an honest review, right? That’s what readers want. But the challenge is sometimes clients want every single message in every single review and they want it said a certain way, as you know, right? So, when you’re dealing with earned influencers, you don’t have control over the exact content. What they’re going to say or when it’s going to be posted. No, they may say, hey, listen, my queue is such that I’m not going to post it till October 20th or whatever it might be.

On the paid side, when you do some paid, you have control over all that, right? But you’re paying for it. So, the majority of our clients are looking for earned. They’re like, hey, I don’t want to have to put a huge budget together to buy it.

[23:26] I’d rather them give them product. and the challenge is controlling the message and the timing of that remote. And I guess it’s kind of tailoring clients’ expectations or adjusting clients’ expectations to make them comfortable with that lack of certainty or knowing when something’s going to pull through has got to be a really tough part of your job.

Yeah. You know, and sometimes it’s interesting. Some influencers, for whatever reason, like we’ll send them all the assets. They may still go to like the website and pull images. It’s, you know, so sometimes we’ll be in a situation where the client will say, they didn’t use the image that you sent. Right. You know, or they didn’t, the link is wrong because we’ll always link it to, you know, Amazon or the client’s website.

So, you know, there’s always challenges. We’re upfront with clients and say, hey, listen, here are the expectations. And here are the expectations from an earned perspective and also from the paid stamp. When you’re dealing with all these small, micro, immature businesses, essentially, these influencers, you got to expect all kinds of things like that are going to just happen.

It’s par for the course, right? Right. Yeah. It’s not so much in the food and beverage, but just a quick input on this. When you’re dealing with, it’s an even bigger challenge with like tech products, because sometimes they don’t even know how to turn stuff on.

[24:47] So, you know what I mean? So that is a challenge. You know, with the food and beverage, it’s pretty straightforward. Food and beverage, the sampling is a little bit of an issue. Depending upon shelf depending upon shipping. We have a client called Mixicals, which is a fruit infused ice cube that you can put into a cocktail, or you can put it into club soda or whatever, and you know, different flavors.

But that’s cold box, right? So, we have to pack it. She has to, Jen Morales, who’s the founder, she has to pack it and send it out and they have to open it and use it in time. So, there’s additional challenges on the, particularly on the beverage side in terms of sampling. So, let’s flip the script and talk mainstream media. Yeah. And I know you’re no stranger to that.

I’ve seen some of your work in achievements, getting earned media in the mainstream space in the past. How does an aspiring challenger food and beverage brand ultimately make their way onto the, you know, is Ellen still around? I think she’s done. She’s done. But you have Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, you have, yeah. Yeah.

[25:53] So, you know, the challenge in traditional media is that there are fewer and fewer traditional media than ever. That’s number one. And number two, the other challenge is that, you know, 10 years ago, if you were to look at even a mainstream publication, right, they would have one reporter for each category. Somebody to cover food, somebody to cover beverage, somebody to cover lifestyle.

[26:19] Nowadays, those publications, because they’re just having a more difficult time making money through advertising, traditional advertising. Can’t hire as many people. Can’t hire as many people. So, now you may have one reporter who covers five or six different industries. So, there’s a challenge and an opportunity. Yeah, I was gonna say, in some ways, they need more help than ever, right? Yeah, the challenge is they’re busy.

[26:39] The challenge is they’re busy. And what that means is that it’s more difficult to have FaceTime with them. Okay. Which we always used to do. Right. The opportunity is they’re looking for stories. So, if you can craft a story and the key is to bring them a story that is totally crafted, that they don’t have to do anything.

Right. Other than maybe interview the client, right? Right. They want it basically, you know, A to Z, if you will. With TV, you know, the national morning shows and the and we do a lot with the morning shows, as you know, and a lot with the afternoon talk shows.

[27:16] Shows. The challenge there is that if you’re too overtly commercial in your outreach to them, they’re going to come back to you and say, listen, this is an integration play. So, what they mean by that is you have to pay and take a program like Kelly and her husband. You know, basically they’ll say is you pay us $150,000. Kelly Clarkson? No, Kelly Ripa. Oh, got it. And Mark, Kelly and Mark, right? Yeah, who’s local to us. Is that why you made Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She’s from Berlin, New Jersey. Shout out Berlin, New Jersey. You know, they’ll say, hey, this is very commercial. So, what you do is you can do a paid integration. So, for $150,000, what we’ll do is we’ll preview it during our chat talk. We’ll give it away to the studio audience. We’ll promote it on our social channels.

So, when you go to those shows, you have to make sure that your pitch is not overly commercial. And a lot of clients, John, truthfully, they write press releases like brochure copy, right? Yeah, right. Because they’re trying to get every message in. The job of an agency, a good agency, is to say, listen, we need to make it newsworthy, timely, and relevant. And it doesn’t mean it’s going to read like you pick up a brochure.

[28:26] So there’s challenges there. But, you know, they’re all looking for content and they’re looking for interesting stories. Sometimes with small startup food and beverage companies, one of the easier ways to get in is to identify journalists or producers that have an interest in it. So, if it’s plant-based or it’s natural products, right? Or if it’s fruit-infused drinks or whatever.

Guilty pleasure, maybe. Guilty pleasure, exactly. Like if they have a personal interest in it, you know, truthfully, it’s easier to kind of sell an opportunity or sell a segment. So doing deep research on the producers, you know, at the shows and doing deep research on the media and that you’re targeting from a traditional standpoint, looking at their Twitters, looking at their social handles. I was going to say, that’s good stuff. You can tell a lot.

Yeah. Well, you may have just answered my question. Yeah. How do you, how do you get those details? Is it scraping their Twitter? Is it maintaining a file on the individual? I guess that maybe that’s a benefit of doing this all the time is you probably have files on these different individuals to some extent and what they do and don’t like and things like that. And knowing what they, yeah, because they’ve, you know, they’ve covered, they’ve covered previous client products. They’ve covered current client products.

[29:46] We keep a file and we, you know, and we know based upon past success. Because truthfully, if you’re successful with one food influencer for one brand, it’s just as easy to go back to them and say, hey, listen, we had success with this brand. Here’s another brand that I think you’d be interested in. And you know that they have some natural interest in it, right? Right.

So, it’s not the Steele dossier, but it’s you know, it’s basically understanding, you know, who these who these journalists are and what their interests and what their likes are. And you mentioned earlier, there’s less than ever. So, you know, there’s only so many that you’re really trying to keep a file on. Yeah. Interesting. You know, you brought up what did you call it?

A paid integration? Yeah. An advertorial of sorts, a paid product placement. Yep. You know, this sparks a compelling discussion because I get asked all the time about achieving earned media. John, can you connect us to a great PR agency like Southern Communications that can get us earned media? But you got to figure there’s a place, an opportunity with some of the paid integration stuff, as long as it’s done in an integrated and seemingly organic way, even if it is actually a paid product placement. Could you talk around some of the particulars there and the role that might

Mainstream Media Strategies

[30:59] play in an overall strategy? Yeah. I mean, listen, the paid integration is interesting because you’re hitting them at every level through every vehicle. You’re getting on-air coverage.

[31:12] You’re getting consumer interaction because when we do paid integrations, we always request that they’re going to send, you know, give the audience product.

[31:20] You’re hitting them on the channel’s social media and then the individual’s social media. So, you’ve already lined up, okay, we’re going to do two tweets and two Instagram posts. And all that is negotiated in advance. And you’re going to drive everybody to a point of purchase.

So even sometimes we’ll give a code. So, we’ll know what the return on that integration is. Sure. Use this code and we’ll know that it came from Kelly Clarkson or Drew Barrymore or Kelly and Mark. So, it’s really, generally the integration people are easy to work with. It’s just those integrations from national media are pretty expensive. Now, the one thing that you’re seeing, you know, we do a lot of TVs, a lot of TV outreach and stuff.

[32:08] One thing I’m seeing is even at the local level, like we’ll pitch a market like Minneapolis. And we had a good story for Minneapolis and the producer came back and said, we charge now. Nobody gets on for free. Not a lot, $500 or whatever, but we charge for a second. Everybody else is doing it.

Yeah, everybody else is doing it. And it’s a way for us to make money because not as many are advertising as previously. obviously.

[32:34] How do they, while we’re on that specific subject of mainstream media integrating, something that’s actually a paid placement, you’re supposed to divulge that in some way. I know in social it’s supposed to be, you know, hashtag sponsored or even just saying this is a sponsored placement. If it’s Kelly Clarkson giving something away to the audience, is there like a little icon or asterisk at the bottom that says this is a paid promotion? Yeah.

Oh, you just got to look for it, huh? You got to look for it, but they’ll put it on at the end of the program. Oh, at the end, and that’ll suffice? Yeah, yeah. I actually, as somebody that doesn’t eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff like you do, I actually find that fascinating. Yeah. Because that was always the big hang-up is, you know, well, it needs to look natural. It needs to look organic.

And if it’s marked as sponsored or paid, then it’s not going to do that. But if you can just throw it in the credits that nobody’s watching at the end, well, then, there you go. Like reading one of those long contracts where you don’t read the small print. And that’s it. And that’s it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so even, you know, even back in the, in the Oprah days, you know, when, you know, when she gave out all the, you know, all the cars and everything, you know, I mean, you know, all that was paid integration. The, the publishing companies and the broadcast companies are just looking for ways, you know, they realize they have an audience, they’re looking for ways to make revenue. I mean, I don’t blame them for that. You know what I mean?

And in certain instances, with clients who have, have money and, and, and it makes sense, we’ll do, we’ll do a paid integration.

[33:55] So national, but I’ll give you an example of like national, the dessert day that I was talking about. This particular client doesn’t have national distribution, but if they did, we would go to like Kelly Clarkson or we go to those shows and say, hey, listen, what a fun segment. Let’s have a pastry chef come on, do, do, do your recipes with whipped cream. And let’s give everybody a box of president’s whipped cream at the end of the segment.

[34:20] And so that’s kind of like a take on what you’re saying about telling the story. In this case, you’re giving them the whole segment. You’re giving them the whole bit. You package every single aspect of the segment. Here’s the key message points. Here’s what we’re going to give away. Here’s why it appeals to your audience. You’re doing all their work for them. So, it starts to be like part of your job or your team’s job is almost like being a show producer, right? Like you’re producing skits. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. That brings us into an interesting corner I wasn’t expecting to get into. So, putting you on the spot here a little bit, but any like off the top recommendations for how to produce or pitch a skit? How do you make a good skit? So, look at, here’s one thing, look at the timeliness of things. Okay. So, I’ll give you a good example. This is a Bev alcohol client of ours. We work with a client called Paul Lanner, which is a big beer in Europe, all-in-one beer.

[35:15] We’ve worked with their U.S. distributor and their CEO, Steve Hauser, for about a decade now. So they’re really well-known for Oktoberfest, which is really big in Germany. So every year other than the COVID year, we went to Fox & Friends, and we take over their plaza on a Saturday morning.

A whole event. A whole event. And that includes German dancers, German food, music, clothing. Like, we actually go out, get the band, get the food. And what’s beautiful about that, that’s not paid, because we went to all the major morning shows, and Fox was the one who said, hey, listen, we’re interested. This sounds pretty cool. We could do it out on our plaza. And we’ve done it every year. We get five sound bites. We get five cut ins.

[36:17] They’ll promote it four or five times during the actual, you know, two hours that the show is on.

Sponsored by. And it’s, and the CEO, Steve, is getting interviewed in one segment. The hosts are drinking the Paul Enner beer. They’re opening the keg in the second segment. The dancers are doing, you know what I mean? So that’s. Anybody doing a beer funnel? Yeah, doing it. Yeah, yeah, you know. Maybe, you never know.

It takes place early in the morning, but I noticed even the hosts, they don’t care about the beer early in the morning. Hey, why not? But that was something where we went to them, the morning shows, and said, hey, listen, Oktoberfest is a huge celebration. It’s very visual. A lot of people are interested in it. Paul Leonard is a major player in Oktoberfest because of their heritage in beer. Let us do something out in your plaza. It’ll be fun for your hosts. It’ll be fun for your viewers. You can invite viewers in. We’ll do a social promotion.

So, we don’t pay for that other than we pay to get the dancers and get the band. But we don’t pay Fox and Friends anything for that. I see. Nothing. Okay. That’s under the earned opportunity. How about that? Yeah. And I noticed right there, you rattled off a few things that were the keys, essentially, to making it all come together.

You mentioned it’s great to look at. It’s engaging in that respect. It’s kind of a beautiful thing. Visual is the word you used, right? They have notoriety, credibility, and a history in the space. The sheer fact that you’re making a spectacle out of it is bound to be more engaging.

[37:44] Speaking of engaging, the interactivity of it all, it’s check, check, check, check, check. We know this makes for great entertainment. It’s a great idea. You got it. Let’s do it. We package it and we get there like four in the morning. I think we actually set some stuff up the night before.

[37:59] And it’s fun. And the key there is we couldn’t do that in May.

Leveraging Trade Shows for Media Attention

[38:05] Couldn’t do it in January. but we can do an October because it’s Oktoberfest. So, when you’re trying for the earned segments with the morning shows or the afternoon shows, the key is home in on like what is a holiday or an occasion. Like one of the most bizarre things, we’ve ever done is a good friend of mine has a frozen food brand and he had a brand called Chef MJ Brando.

They had grilled cheese. Yes. Pop out the grilled cheese, put it in the microwave, boom, you have a grilled cheese sandwich. There’s a national grilled cheese day in April.

[38:43] There’s a day for everything these days. There’s a day for everything. You must have that calendar. We have the calendar. It’s your desktop wallpaper. We have it every year. We have that calendar updated and say, okay, where can we fit in?

[38:57] Right now, we’re gearing up to do a lot for breast cancer awareness with women and brands that we represent, Susan G. Komen and those groups. Oops. So creating the timeliness. So that producer, because it’s easy for the producer to say, I like that, but I don’t need to do it now.

You know what I mean? So, you need to create that timely aspect of the segment and say, if you’re not going to do it in the beginning of October, then it doesn’t make sense to do it. Boy, I mean, even just reflecting on our conversation today, I don’t know how you and other PR firms do it if you’re really firing on all cylinders between the social media, all the different channels you need to activate, dealing with the mainstream media, dealing with the mid-level blogs, which we haven’t even gotten into yet, the event marketing, the managing the calendar. There are so many different facets to this.

It really is a lot of different skill sets. And I think that explains in large part the value of bringing in a third party that’s not just an individual, but a whole team that can juggle these different pieces for you. Yeah. And I think it helped. What we do helps recruit people for the most part. If you want to do more than just do media buying or copywriting or planning. Right. Because my team, they’re.

[40:14] Writing releases, they’re pitching media, they’re coordinating events, they’re going to trade shows. You know, in the food industry, you know, we go to fancy food show, to two fancy food shows. We go to natural products, Expo East, Expo West. We manage press opportunities for clients at those shows. So, for somebody who’s interested and curious, you know, this is an industry like yours.

I think the more curious you are, the happier you’ll be because you’re doing a lot of different things day in and day out. You need to be able to balance and you need to be able to manage time, which is a challenge with younger people. But it does give them a sense of fulfillment that they’re not doing the same thing over and over and over every single day.

[40:54] I’m glad you bring up the shows because before we wrap, I know you do a ton with conferences and things like that.

Could you give the audience, listeners, aspiring challenger food brands a peek into what the strategy is as far as using the trade shows as a jump-off point for getting media attention?

[41:13] Yeah. So, the trade shows from a business standpoint, for a lot of early-stage companies, the issue from a business standpoint is that you don’t have reps that can help sell you into retail. You don’t have distributors that might distribute either in the U.S. or internationally.

So, if you go to a trade show, like a fancy food show, there’s one in San Francisco, one in New York, there’s Natural Products, which is in Anaheim in March, and then it’s in Baltimore in next month, September, it gives you an opportunity to create relationships that could help you from a business perspective. That’s number one. Number two is that at all these shows, you’ll have media and influencers that are interested in finding new brands and discovering new brands.

So, what we do, a couple of things. One is all of them have industry trade eight publications that are distributed during the show. So, a no-brainer is basically to make sure your clients are featured in those publications so that if a buyer from Kroger is all flipping through it, they say, hey, here’s a cool new product. Let me go to their booth and see it. So we do all that editorial that usually happens a couple months before the actual show.

And I’m sorry to interject, but do you have both paid placements and essentially editorial placements throughout that brochure, or is it all just paid stuff? So, most of it is editorial.

[42:32] Some clients will, if they can afford it, will do some paid as well. Right.

Particularly if you’re really new and you don’t, even from a, from just from a business standpoint, making contacts. A lot of early-stage food companies are entrepreneurs that like have an interest in plant-based food, but they don’t know anything about the business. Right.

We had, you know, the ladies from Socially Twisted on, you know what I mean? I mean, great game, but they knew nothing about the industry, right? Similar in the food and Bev, you’re getting a lot of the early-stage companies that are similar to that. So, so those shows are valuable from that perspective. You do have media that go to these shows. So, for us, what we do is we set up in advance, we’ll set up appointments.

So, they’ll come, and we’ll do one-on-one demonstrations of the product. We’ll introduce it to them. We’ll provide them with assets, and we’ll talk to them about, you know, how they can cover the, how they can cover the product coming out of the show.

So, it’s hard to get nowadays, John, it’s hard to get media to go to like a press. People say, hey, let’s do a press conference. It’s harder than ever to get media to come. them. The beauty of like a trade show is you’re already going to have those media there. So, it’s easier to get them to come over to your booth and introduce them to your brand than it is to try to do a standalone.

Because the other thing is a lot of them are located all around the country. A lot are in New York, but a lot of them are located around the country. So, that’s where trade shows really help from a, from a media, a media and influencer perspective.

[43:59] Fantastic. And I know you’re a big advocate of, of taking full advantage of those.

You’re constantly on the road at these things yeah yeah it’s interesting you meet it’s where you also meet i don’t i don’t go to there to to like you know cold call business but i just the shows will give you a sense also.

[44:17] Competitively what’s out there like what is how are the brands positioning themselves in the market and it’s interesting for market intelligence as well as from the standpoint from a media perspective well i really appreciate you breaking it down for us bill both about the shows and just overall.

I think we’re up against it time-wise, but for listeners that want to get in touch with you about marketing their consumer product good or otherwise, what’s the best way to do so?

So, it’s, name of the agency is Southern Communications, S-O-U-T-H-A-R-D Communications. My email is simple. It’s bill at southerninc.com. And just email me, reach out, and I’ll be sure to get back in touch with you. And even if you’re not ready for a PR program, I say this to John all the time, even if you’re not ready, I’m more than happy to talk to you and kind of guide the brands through that because at some point they will be ready. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, thanks so much, Bill. It was a pleasure having you and I look forward to having you back when we do a segment on the toy or children’s product space. I know you have deep, deep knowledge there as well. I do. Thanks, Bill. Thank you, John. Appreciate it.