Beyond the Fridge Bean Dip: Sustaining Viral Momentum in CPG Marketing
Beyond the Fridge Bean Dip: Sustaining Viral Momentum in CPG Marketing
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In this week's discussion, Emily chats with Jessyca Dewey, the founder of The Y Collective, a social-first digital marketing agency working with CPG better for you brands. She discusses her journey from working in-house at brands like Califia Farms and VaynerMedia to starting her own agency, emphasizing the importance of integrated marketing approaches for smaller brands. Jessica highlights the value of being an extension of a brand's team and the need for senior expertise in digital marketing. The episode covers topics like the success of a viral video campaign for Biena Snacks, the significance of social media presence for emerging brands, and key indicators for when a brand might be ready to partner with an agency. Jessica also offers valuable advice for emerging CPG brands!
TUNE IN FOR TOPICS LIKE:
00:40 Jessyca’s career background and journey to starting an agency
2:08 The why behind and differentiators of The Y Collective
4:20 What to look for in an agency partner
6:50 Why social should come first
9:37 Building a strong foundation for Biena Snacks
13:22 Creating that viral fridge bean dip moment
16:25 Capitalizing on virality to sustain success
22:16 Indicators you might be ready to partner with an agency on digital marketing
28:52 Key advice for emerging CPG brands
Listen to this week’s Local Marketing School conversation!
Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Jessyca’s episode:
#2: Local PR for CPG Brands & Beyond | Delaney Vetter, PR Strategist and Copywriter
#13: Brewing Change and Scaling Impact | Rod Johnson, BLK & Bold
Don't hesitate to reach out! We'd love to hear from you on Instagram and find out which episodes you're enjoying the most. Your feedback is so important to us! Please take a moment to rate the show and leave a review - it supports our ongoing Local Marketing School journey and helps us develop more content that addresses what you’re hoping to learn more about!
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Emily Steele
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Local Marketing School. This is a podcast all about local marketing strategies and talking to really amazing brands and humans and just overall smart people who can add value to your life. it's been a minute since we hosted a podcast. We took a little summer break as one needs to do every once in a while, right? Took the summer, frankly, to just really focus on getting our community side of the house over at Hummingbird's really in a good spot. We have been growing so quickly that running a marketplace is so fascinating because it's always about finding that supply and demand ratio and balance. so much of the business is working phenomenally well. And when we look at the Hummingbird's supply side of the house, there's so much that we're learning around acquiring, activating, retaining, kind of thinking of those pirate metrics for all of you marketers listening to this, and really fine tuning every step of the journey. So spent a while doing that. Enjoyed a little trip to Italy for a wedding and, you know, actually got a wrap up summer with a really exciting announcement.
So we're actually going to Boston for the Million Dollar Pitch Competition. So I get to be one of six finalists on the stage in Boston at the Inbound Conference that HubSpot hosts, pitching Hummingbirds. I get three minutes, which is kind of wild. But if you're there, will you come listen and cheer us on? That would be so appreciated. But I really would love to know who's going to the Inbound Conference, because I'll be there, and I've never been to Boston, so also taking recommendations there. I've already got a solid list going from friends who live there or have visited, but I am happy to keep adding to the list. anyway, enough about me. I hope you are doing fabulous. I'm excited to introduce you to Jessyca Dewey, who is the guest today. Jessyca, a little more about her. She grew up in a small farm town in central California where she learned about agriculture's economic disparities and environmental impact.
Her first farm -to -table experience took place at her grandparents' farm where her grandma harvested apples from the yard to make fresh applesauce. my gosh. And she often served meals with the fresh produce from her garden. There she became aware of the importance of a better food system for all and in the power of caring for our world collectively. Jessyca landed in LA for college and while building her career, also spent a decade volunteering to improve the circumstances of youth and foster care through CASA LA and other organizations.
She's an active volunteer in the animal rescue space, which is how she adopted her current rescue pup, Petey. And with more than 16 years of content and digital marketing experience, Jessyca's worked with brands like L'Oreal, Hasbro, and Califia Farms. She was even an early team member for content giant Demand Media, which is now Leaf Group, and helped open the VaynerMedia LA offices, where she led the team to win Webby and Shorty Awards on behalf of their work for L'Oreal USA.
Through the Y collective, Jessyca aims to shift the way in which emerging consumer brands with a purpose sell for digital marketing solutions in a better results -driven, holistic way while having fun all at the same time, which is totally my jam. So Jessyca, welcome to the show.
Emily Steele (00:13)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Local Marketing School. I'm Emily, your host today and I'm excited to have Jessyca Dewey with us today. She's with the Y Collective and has such a fascinating background and what she has done in the world. And so we wanted to bring her on to showcase who she is and what she's all about. So Jessyca, welcome to the show.
Jessyca (00:31)
Hi, Emily. Thanks so much for having me.
Emily Steele (00:33)
Of course. Okay, well tell everyone about you. Where are you from? What do you do in the world? And how did you get to Y Collective?
Jessyca (00:40)
Sure. So I'm Jessyca. the founder of The Y Collective, which is a social first digital marketing agency for CPG Better For You Brands. And, you know, how did I get here? I guess, you know, I'm from a small farm town, but I live in LA now. And I think that that's part of my, it's an important part of my origin story. You know, I grew up hearing stories about my mom's pet cow, Charlie, and then I ultimately transitioned my content and social marketing journey to work for Califia Farms. So I have worked in-house for Califia Farms. I've worked on brands including L'Oreal. I worked at VaynerMedia with Gary Vaynerchuk and I founded the Y Collective in 2021 with the idea of finding a better digital marketing solution for better for you brands in the emerging CPG space.
Emily Steele (01:35)
Cool, what did you think was broken or that you could fix differently? Clearly, you set out because you're like, I could either do it better or maybe you want more autonomy, be in your own boss. What instigated some of the creations of this?
Jessyca (01:47)
Sure, great question. So, you I was at VaynerMedia and then I was the director of content for a company called System One where we did content at scale. And then I transitioned to run the social media at Califia Farms. And so I had both agency experience and in-house experience. And what I realized is that for brands that are smaller than Califia Farms, there was this inefficiency in how the brands operated on social media and beyond. for example, at Califia Farms, we'd see one photo be used on paid media, and then another photo be used on digital, and then another photo be used on organic social. And those three photos for each photo costs a certain amount of money, and they had different messaging tied to them.
And that's fine, that might work for bigger brands with bigger budgets, but when we're talking about brands that are like under 50 million in revenue, we need to consolidate that messaging. So I saw that as like one area of inefficiency that I wanted to help solve for. I also kind of saw how agencies can often feel very transactional and we are really built to feel like an extension of your team. With us, you get only senior players. Our team has a collective of about 60 years experience on our core team of six people. So you get deep marketing expertise and we can really leverage that for our brands as true partners versus kind of a take and give, or we're keeping track of everything and trying to... In some ways, it's like predatory and not too transactional versus really doing what we need to do to make sure that our partners are successful.
Emily Steele (03:48)
Yeah, I think like I've had the experience on both ends of like feeling like an agency really feels like an extension of our team and our team goals and others where it's like, no, hitting the deliverables. Are you good? And like it is so different. So what do think you're doing to foster more of that? Like, okay, we're an extension of your team. What does that like both feel like and look like day to day? Because I think that's important for people who are listening to this and considering working with an agency or changing like what would it like what's your approach versus maybe a different one?
Jessyca (04:21)
sure. I mean, I can give you a few examples of things that we've known, we've heard are very much appreciated. We've gone to a number of in -person events as like members of the brand team. I flew to Sonoma for one of our clients and like helped hand out samples in 105 degree weather last summer because their head of marketing at the time was unable to attend. And so I did that.
Emily Steele (04:48)
Yeah. Yep.
Jessyca (04:49)
Our team showed up at Expo and worked at one of our client's booths this year and last year for another client. So I think that's one example of we just really, we show up and we help as needed and aren't afraid to get our hands dirty. But then I think the other parts are really looking for ways to have an integrated marketing approach. So for example, some calls that I've had in the last couple of days.
One was brainstorming how we could better support integrated marketing efforts for the brand. We're a digital marketing agency, but that doesn't mean that we're not coming up with ways to collect email addresses at different booths that clients are doing at various events or working on ways to better support Whole Foods as a partner and making sure that we're doing retail, shopper, marketing activations in stores whether that's sending people into the stores, working on content to support that, looking at all these different ways that we can integrate, and then making sure that it's an efficient use of spend for the clients as well in or without. Another example is I started with that Califia example of there'd be these three different photos that fit in three different spaces, and we've had clients who've used some of our photos that were taken for social include unlimited usage on those.
Emily Steele (05:51)
Mm, got it.
Jessyca (06:12)
And so what that means for those who don't know is that our clients use those on their website, their social, and we've even seen them use in their shop or marketing, like in trade, printed out or on their sell sheets. it depends, that's not the right solution for every brand depending on their budget and what their goals are. But when you're really in a certain budget category, like those, every little thing counts because that's cost savings with each reuse of that image.
Emily Steele (06:21)
Right, yeah, that makes so much sense. So when you talk about being a social first digital marketing agency, that, those are your words, right? Social first, okay, okay.
Jessyca (06:48)
Yeah, yeah, social first digital marketing agency.
Emily Steele (06:49)
Yeah, so I love the positioning of that and that's obviously really intentional. So what does that mean if you break it down, social first, if someone's like, I have my own assumptions, but would love to hear you just describe it.
Jessyca (7:02)
Yeah, so I think that what it means for us is that the social is our bread and butter, pun intended. And we started offering other services as a means to support or help that initial offering. So for example, we have a Shopify capability and we have a certified Shopify partner that we build websites for. But the reason we decided to build out that capability was because we had a partner that came to us and said, and we wanna drive sales through our website. And I said, well, your website hasn't been updated in a few years. we can't drive sales through your website. So we built that out. Other efficiencies, we look at the integrated marketing calendar that for us starts with Instagram for most of our clients.
Jessyca (07:59)
But then we have another, like we had one client, for example, where we did a batch of social content. It was photos in particular. And then we made sure that we optimized the shots so that they could use them on 15 different blog posts and in their email marketing as well. that in this, it was meant for Instagram, but they got a lot more uses out of it than for Instagram. So that's how we, when we think of social first, We think that's the thing that is like kind of the baseline that people tend to come to us for. And then there's these other things that need to kind of spoke out from there in terms of spoken wheel.
Emily Steele (08:39)
Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, you just think too, like, my gosh, so many of the things we create as marketing professionals have the potential for so much more mileage. So even thinking about it from like graphics and content makes so much sense that you can be social first, but so many other channels can benefit from the assets that are created for that. I love it.
Jessyca (08:49)
Absolutely. Right, and there's a big benefit to making sure that the messaging is cyclical or cyclical in nature, right? And that you think of all of the different channels as a piece of real estate and you wouldn't use them all the exact same way, but you do kind of want them to work together and talk together.
Emily Steele (09:10)
Yeah, so for your clients specifically, you're thinking about the social first piece of like, okay, here's how we think about Instagram. And maybe going through some of your experience with Biena Snacks could be helpful to you. think that's a great example that like I was able to witness some of the virality, but also the broader kind of thought process of how to get to that moment. So do you want to talk through like some of that strategy as much or as little as you can share?
Jessyca (09:42)
Absolutely. mean, this is always the tricky part because I want to be respectful of our amazing clients. And I have to give a huge shout out to, to Biena as we talk about them. They have been phenomenal partners. And I think that one of the things that they've been phenomenal with is just learning, like leaning in with us to what's working and what's not. And so we've, we've, we've been with Biena for a little bit more than a year now. And during that time we've had quite a bit of success and that success hasn't always been measured in numbers, but it really at the beginning stages, Emily was engaged in terms of learnings. We did have a huge lift when we first took over the account. It was somewhere in the range of 800% in engagement in one month over month. It was like quite shocking, but as we know, like there's a lot of factors that play into those numbers.
Jessyca (10:37)
I hate saying numbers like that because it kind of doesn't take into consideration what had been happening for the brand before we took it over. With that being said, know, Biena Snacks has a number of really great value propositions as a brand. Their chips, for example, not only they taste phenomenal, they're so good. If you haven't tried Biena tasty thins, run to Whole Foods and try them. But they also are four calories per chip, which is outstanding. So if you're calorie conscious, you get, I think it's something, I get the numbers kind of mixed up, but you get, you can kind of snack on them as much as you want and feel and not feel crappy afterward. And so we really wanted to make sure that we were testing that messaging out with the consumers. And ultimately what we found in the first few months was that it wasn't resonating with existing Biena followers from an organic social lens, because the organic followers already knew that that was that Biena was a better for you snacking option. And so they wanted something that was more fun. And that told a little bit more of the personality and entertain them and reminded them that they needed to crack open their Biena versus why they already kind of got the why they needed the how like how should I be using these when you know what do I want about the brand to help me be an evangelizer of the brand? What do need to know?
Jessyca (12:03)
And so we pivoted a couple of times and a couple of months before we hit this major viral moment with the fridge bean dip, we had really gotten into our groove with them. again, huge shout out to our brand partners. They let us run with it. I mean, we were having a lot of fun and our reels were getting consistent lift.
And we started building their ambassador program, really diving deep into the community. So some of the content that we were posting was from our ambassadors. And some of it was content that we were creating through The Y Collective and our talented content creators. And I think that that warming up of the algorithm, getting people engaged, really fine tuning the hooks and the audio and the content and the aesthetic really allowed for this big moment that happened in May for the brand that I know I think we'll talk more about.
Emily Steele (12:58)
Mm -hmm Yeah, the bean dip just watching that video is like my gosh that brought me so much joy So do you want to talk a little bit about? What this was not to over index on like what was the piece of content that did it all it was super creative and fun and like No, I would never have expected to open a fridge and see that so it was like So how do you like come up with that level of creative? What was it just so so we're we're sharing what it is and we'll link to it obviously.
Jessyca (13:24)
Sure. Yeah, yeah. So we'll share. So for those who don't know, but you know, the numbers show that about one-tenth of the United States probably does, has seen it, but I'll jog your memory. if you can picture my hand opening a fridge door and then opening the cheese drawer to a massive seven layer bean dip with which we dip in and grab the chip. And these are the hands. I did it in my kitchen because often, and again, with us, we're super hands on. And I often do the content that I don't feel comfortable asking anyone else to do. And this was an example of it. Nobody is jumping on deck to fill their kitchen with $150 worth of bean dip. But yeah, so it really went super viral. And to set expectations, I know social media marketers would come for me if I didn't say, like, virality is not a reasonable goal for brands to seek after. Going viral is not something that happens easily, often, or in any way is necessarily even the objective.
Jessyca (14:44)
But it did, it went really, really viral. And there are a few components to it. One is that it was out of this world, you know, I mean, it just was a very different idea. The other is that the brand was not centered in it. And I firmly believe that that was something that was important in this particular case. And then I think the third was that it had some like visual elements of surprise. When you see a hand opening up the fridge, you're kind of immediately tuned in to like what is what nonsense is about to go down. And we delivered on that. So, you know, was 40, it got somewhere around 40 million plays. It's still climbing months, months later. you know, from 40 million, that is that is one tenth of the country. So it was quite the success. And it's been it's been a fun journey capitalizing on that, making sure that the brand gets all of the value in the months.
Emily Steele (15:43)
Yeah, yeah, is it hard to measure some of those moments just knowing like, Biena snacks is like, are they seen like from an ecom standpoint, a lift or is it more like, hey, this is like a retail play for the majority of their sales.
Jessyca (15:58)
Okay, so again, like this is something that I need to scream from the rooftops until the cows come home. God, that was such a Midwestern thing for me to say, but you know, whatever. If the shoe fits, yeah, it is for me too. I'm from rural California, so it's kind of like the Midwest. It's kind of like the Midwest, but.
Emily Steele (16:11)
Hey, it's on brand for me. Yeah, that's fair.
Jessyca (16:25)
Success on organic social does not equal sales. It doesn't equal sales, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have value and doesn't drive sales in some capacity. But, you know, we saw a huge lift in engagement for the algorithm. We continue to see that lift play out month over month. Our content is performing better than it was previously, and it continues to. We got a bunch of new followers, but nothing to the degree that you might anticipate. If you hadn't had this experience before. And I can't really speak to the sales because that's not something that I want to share at the group level. But it really did have a lot of value. And I think what ended up having more value was the halo effect of how we responded to it. We, knowing that the original video didn't have the brand centered, we made sure that we owned the conversation immediately. We immediately created a war room where I brought in some of our most valued advisors. So we had like a comms and a marketing advisor that were helping kind of guide the Y Collective in the strategy. The Y Collective team really came together in a beautiful way to get content created quickly, created a bunch of additional content that was bringing the brand more in using some of the tactics that I learned at VaynerMedia, which were to use the platform features that are native. we did a bunch of video comment responses. We indexed the highest performing comments on the video and did comment video responses to them in which we had Biena brought in so then if you look at the video you can see all of the comment response videos both on the grid and in the comment section. And we really continue to lean into the like unhinged nature but also I think something that's really worthwhile there is that with this unhinged content we're keeping the brand not only centered but we're also making sure that we're highlighting the use occasions and this idea of abundance.
Emily Steele (18:21)
Yeah, makes so much sense. I love that. Yeah.
Jessyca (18:49)
And one thing that I learned while at Califia was when we are thinking about things that have a high volume of use occasion. like a bean dip, how many bags of Biena chips do you need? Can't see my hands, but like the bean dip is huge. And how do you get people to use as many chips or as many bags of chips? as you can versus a use occasion where it's just a couple of chips, right? So at , the example always was like using a little bit of oat milk in your coffee wasn't going to have as much retail velocity as having a latte, right? People would, if you made lattes and popularized the use of lattes, I might grab my oat milk latte. Then you know, then the use occasion and the retail velocity increases. So I think that's one big sales learning that we've focused on for Biena.
Emily Steele (19:53)
Mm -hmm. Super. Yep. Cool. So interesting because, I feel like so much of the world of marketing is like always tie something to performance, right? And like to a degree, like...Sometimes you can, right? Like when you see social firsts like campaigns, you can feel a lift maybe geographically or like from an e-commerce, but I do find that like translating something like that to an offline thing that's measured is like friends like we'll feel this hopefully at like the company growth level, but like this moment, like not being e-commerce centric, like you're just not gonna have that in the same way you would have it for true ecom brand and like that's okay you can still do brand marketing really well.
Jessyca (20:36)
And yeah, and that's okay. But here's one thing that I've learned. The more I've done this, the more we've specialized in CPG, the more we continue to hear that for emerging brands, social is the baseline of what they need. It's like you need a website and then you need organic social. And everything else builds on top of that. And some of the reasons that I heard, I mean, I had a great conversation with a long time former Whole Foods buyer just last week. And she said, I think brands need it even earlier than they think that they do. Because what you don't understand is that, you're not selling DTC necessarily and organic social isn't doing that. But buyers look at it. Buyers look at your Instagram to see how active you are, how serious you are, how committed you are, whether or not you have an audience that's engaging with you. And not only do buyers, but investors do too. We hear that when people in VCs are looking to do any investors and looking to invest in a seed round or whatever, that they're looking at your Instagram to see what you're up to, what your ethos looks like, if you're speaking and resonating with an audience. These are factors that do play into the success of your business. It just doesn't necessarily look like how some people think that it might.
Emily Steele (21:48)
Yeah, yeah, I think that distinction is really really helpful for people so someone who might be like their early stages of getting their CPG brand off the ground maybe they're in like a couple local shops like is that the right size for them to consider working with The Y Collective to like bring that social presence forward or do they hit like a specific milestone in the company that you're like this probably makes more sense today to work with a company like ours?
Jessyca (22:19)
But know, 2020, or 2024, 2024 has been so different for the CPG landscape that figuring out what the factors are for when a brand might want to work with us is tricky. I think one thing that's special about us is that we really care about brand success. Not to say that other agencies don't because I've had the privilege of getting to know people at other agencies that do a fantastic job as well. But we'll help guide you through that process. One of our pillars or our values is that we will never sell a digital marketing service that we don't think is the right fit for where your brand is based on your brand's goals and budget. And I think that is the place that we start of what are you trying to achieve? What do you need to be doing? And how can we support you? Or is it, are you needing that in a year? So I think if a brand is in a couple of shops, and they have some early investors and they want to really make sure that their foundation is established in a way that is meaningful and impactful. I think we would probably recommend either like our content library package or our consulting package. And the consulting is just kind of a mentorship. mean, we provide some tools, but it's really just one-on-one with me for the most part, learning how to set it up so that maybe we could transition into running their whole account in like six months to a year. and what is it that they need, making sure that they're not falling prey into working with partners that are like, yeah, if you pay $600, we'll blow up your whole account and you'll have a million followers because that's predatory. It doesn't exist. So, you know, making sure that they're like, they have those next steps in front of them. Yeah, yeah. So.
Emily Steele (23:48)
So from a consulting perspective, like the brands you're working with, it's more like, hey, these are like the strategies we're thinking we want to bring to social or just like, or overall digital marketing and like, can you help guide us? Like, does this make sense? Would you not do these things? Is that kind of the relationship and goal driven to you, I would assume.
Jessyca (24:27)
Yeah, so you know, our bread and butter is the more full service running social, paid social, running all the content creation and beyond. But we do these consultancies for brands that are just starting to get their feet wet and what that looks like can be specific to what their needs are. So sometimes it's an audit and building out a social calendar. Sometimes it's looking at competitors on social and helping them decide what is ownable and what isn't, what is doable based on what their means are. I think I had a conversation recently that was really interesting where they said, well, I don't think we want photos or video, but we just want social and their pre-launch. And I was like, well, what are you gonna post?
Jessyca (25:20)
then and you know I don't mean that as shade to those people like there's a learning curve. I think it was a really good conversation in the sense of like no but like you gotta we got like these are not right yeah and so you know what does that look like what is your budget entail like what are the cheaper ways if you don't have budget to have photo like professional photography or professional video created then what are the ways that we can do that and how can we get you from stage A to stage B when maybe bringing on a full service agency is gonna be the better solution for you.
Emily Steele (25:53)
Yeah, yeah, it's so navigating that like, that messy middle of like, I think we're ready, but we're not quite ready. We're not totally sure it's a big like leap to entrust like time resources into an agency, but obviously can have such compounding impact. So I like been there done that right of like, ooh, making these decisions like it's a big bet. And like, yeah.
Jessyca (26:16)
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that we take pride in is that we want emerging brands to be successful, especially in the better for you space. You we are called the Y collective in part because my name is Jessyca with a Y in the middle, but also because we serve brands with the Y and our heart is really in making sure that the brands are successful. And a lot of times what that means is making sure that they have something, they have a marketing solution that is impactful and really helps them achieve their overall business goals and isn't just like, we'll take your money because we're a business. You know, that's not how we think about it.
Emily Steele (26:58)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is very alarming to see how many do exist, to be like, yeah, we can do that for you, and just not feel connected to even what you're doing. I'm like, but I want you to understand our vision and our mission, to understand what motivates us every morning. I think that's so, to find those partners is really special. So I'm so glad you get to be that for brands that are really looking for a thought partner on that journey because it requires some vulnerability too to be like, okay, we're going to put things out into the world that people are going to have to have an opportunity to respond to and have feelings about us and be like, you are that person, that company that introduces a brand in such a different or spin of a way.
Jessyca (27:38)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a better, best and excellent level of that too. We really aim to find a solution that is based on what the brand needs in the moment. So we can always iterate and improve or change the messaging and test it. I think that's one thing that I love about social is being able to communicate with your audience and not to them and you can hear their feedback and you get to test and learn what lands and what doesn't and when it lands and through what channel and and Shift accordingly.
Emily Steele (28:29)
Yeah, it's like a big playground. Or better, it works. It is fun. Okay, as we kind of wrap up the conversation, as you think about the brands you work with, any type of advice you would want to share with them is, like a CPG brand is clearly onto something and you're like, my gosh, you have to do this or don't do this. What are some of those things you'd be like, my gosh, I want to make sure I say this?
Jessyca (28:32)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, it's fun.
I think there are a couple things. If I could distill it
Yeah, let me think. Okay. I want to give you a
Emily Steele (29:23)
Yeah.
Jessyca (29:25)
solid. A couple things. One, think oftentimes brands lose the plot a little bit. We are ideally looking at creating content for social that is both native to the platform and fits how people truly engage with a brand or an account on the platform using the platform's features and like what's trending, all of that over in this bucket, and then where the brand overlaps into it. And so we're picturing kind of a Venn diagram. And I think that that's the sweet spot of what's in the middle, where do they intersect? And oftentimes what you see is that a brand gets so stuck on what their messaging is that they don't shift it to fit into what's happening on the channel. Or sometimes they focus so much on what is trending or what is happening on the platform that it doesn't then match the brand. And so I would really encourage brands that are doing a lot of this themselves. I'm happy to talk if they aren't. But if they're doing it themselves, look for that spot in between where they meet. I think the other thing that is really important for us When we're thinking about social content that resonates on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, it often is this content that seems so simple. Like the opening of the video that our bean dip, our bean dip video, the fridge bean dip was a seven second video seen by 40 million people. But it was seven seconds. But let's take a big step back and understand But that was a seven second video that took me, a pretty senior person, four hours. And I think when we put this lens and the value of content, so we have to come up with the idea. We have to put the idea in front of the client. And then I spent an hour deep cleaning my fridge, taking things out of it, building $150 worth of a seven layer bean dip. And don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I love what I do. It was a ton of fun. But I think often founders or marketers who haven't been on the content creation side of things tend to think, well, that's just a seven second video. Just go do it. And there's this idea that like interns do it, right? You see that a lot. There's a lot of discourse happening about like, that's not the marketing intern. That's a highly specialized skilled person spending hours doing this. And I think that what we saw in that particular example is that this stuff works. And it really does drive, it can move the needle if we as a group take the risk to do it and value it appropriately. And know that we didn't just like post this video in a silo, we worked really hard to make sure that the content was up to par and that everything that happened for the brand ahead of time lent itself to this big moment and that we're capitalizing on it as much as we can for our brand client in the aftermath or in the moments afterward. And so there's a proper evaluation to the work being done that I want people to understand and know, you can't just assign an intern to everything, friends, okay? I know. Yes, yes, we do too. I don't have any words for sure.
Emily Steele (32:44)
So, so interesting. I love how you can take something so complex and just break it down of like, hey, here's how you can think about something because there's so many nuances to marketing and this conversation in general. And it is hard to be like, well, if you bubble it up, here's kind of like directionally where we go with how we think about things. So I just appreciate how you think about things and just how you bring that to your clients. And I'm excited that we got to kind of share about how you think about things and how you do things at The Y Collective. So anyone who wants to check out more of what you do in the world, where can they find you? Little plug for you.
Jessyca (33:50)
Yeah, so we're at www.ycollectiveagency.com, same Instagram handle, and I'm Jessyca, J -E -S -S -Y -C -A, Dewey on LinkedIn. I think if there's one big takeaway, it's that we're here to help. I'd love the opportunity to chat and help direct any better for your CPG brands in the right direction, whether it's us or not, like we really were here because we have a why and we want to help you see your why through as well.
Emily Steele (34:37)
Amazing. Thanks, Jessyca.
Jessyca (34:39)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Emily.
