EP378: Marketing Magic: Exploring Innovative Strategies With Robyn Eagles | GTMSC

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Stacy Jones: Welcome to Marketing Mistakes and how to avoid them. I’m Stacey Jones and I’m so happy to be here with you all today and I want to give a very warm welcome to Robin Eagle. Robin is the Principal strategist of Gtmsc, a gotomarket strategy and communications firm specializing in helping businesses grow through strategic consulting and communication. With 24 years of marketing expertise, Robin has led innovation marketing at Acura and Communications and PRS, Honda and Kelly Blue Book and lived agency life at both Mission Control Communications with startups and Fleshman Hillard, managing various entertainment and technology accounts including Seagate, Mitsubishi and Sony Entertainment. Her track record includes trailblazing cost effective, high impact strategies driving a 62% sales surge among gen, Z and multicultural audiences.

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Stacy Jones: Today, Robin and I are going to be chatting about how to control the brand narrative to get the right messaging across to drive sales, but still build an authentic brand fan for consumers. We’ll learn what works from Robin’s perspective, what should be avoided and how some businesses miss the mark. Robin, welcome. So happy to have you here today.

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Robyn Eagles: Thanks Stacey, nice to be here.

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Stacy Jones: Well, what I always love to do is start off with how did you get to here today because you have had an interesting story.

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Robyn Eagles: Yeah, I had 24 years in this space and started out in PR.

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Robyn Eagles: Always thought I wanted to be a.

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Robyn Eagles: CMO somewhere, so I thought it would best if I take the long track getting there. I wanted to be an expert in everything, whether it was experiential or social or marketing advertising. So I’ve kind of taken the long trail to get to where I’m at and most recently decided I don’t think I want to be a CMO somewhere.

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Robyn Eagles: I think I’m going to start my own deal.

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Robyn Eagles: So recently launched Gtmse, which is the go to market strategies and very quickly.

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Robyn Eagles: Gained a couple of clients and ready to go.

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Stacy Jones: Well, I share with you the fact know, that idea of a CMO route is something that once you take on agency ownership, it goes out the window. And you realize that you can help so many CMOS and so many businesses and that you can have such an interesting time learning about not just a few companies along the way, but potentially dozens, if not hundreds of companies that congratulations. It is going to be an awesome journey for you.

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Robyn Eagles: Thank you. Yeah, I mean I’m a lifelong learner and I enjoy learning new stuff every day. So I think working with various clients day in and day out will give me that opportunity to learn about new.

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Robyn Eagles: Industries, new products and new ways to help consumers.

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Stacy Jones: So we started off chatting before this podcast started about the brand narrative and that’s what I said were going to be talking about today. You have a lot of thoughts and beliefs about that brand narrative that some people might hold it a little too close to their vest in order to actually get their marketing messaging across in the right ways. Can you share a little bit more?

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Robyn Eagles: Sure, yeah.

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Robyn Eagles: When it comes to controlling the narrative, coming from public relations and writing narratives for different brands, products, and companies, we really try to pick the right words to drive emotions and drive consumers to be interested in buying a product and.

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Robyn Eagles: All of these things.

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Robyn Eagles: The narrative part is to help grow the brand, increase mind share, increase market.

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Robyn Eagles: Share, ultimately increase revenues and stock prices and shareholder value.

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Robyn Eagles: Those are all the things that we.

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Robyn Eagles: Have to measure when we think about.

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Robyn Eagles: Writing a brand narrative. But I don’t think we take a.

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Robyn Eagles: Lot of time in thinking about what.

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Robyn Eagles: Happens when we over control the narrative and making sure that we only stay.

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Robyn Eagles: In a singular lane. There’s one PR video I’ve seen on YouTube recently where I think it’s Elon Musk’s brother Kimball.

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Robyn Eagles: He’s being interviewed and they keep asking him various questions, and he has one.

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Robyn Eagles: Answer for every single question.

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Robyn Eagles: And to me, that’s just like one of the finest examples of over controlling the narrative, not staying authentic to the interview, authentic to yourself or the company. And it can come out in a variety of ways, but that’s just one of those things that happens in PR. But I’ve seen it happen in experiential.

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Robyn Eagles: Marketing, social media choices, influencers events and product placement.

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Stacy Jones: And it’s because of fear. I mean, that’s the reason why that narrative is controlled so much. Someone is fearful that the wrong thing will be said, the wrong choice will be made, and that a Bud Light event will happen, basically, but not usual.

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Robyn Eagles: Typically they are not.

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Robyn Eagles: I mean, we are in this heavily.

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Robyn Eagles: Political environment right now, and so I.

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Robyn Eagles: Think we have to, as brand marketers, whether with companies or agencies, you need to always take a look at what.

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Robyn Eagles: The risks are and educate the executives.

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Robyn Eagles: Before we go into this. I mean, there’s always going to be major money behind it. So you have to educate these folks on what those risks are and make sure that they’re willing to take those risks. I mean, I’ve tried eight ways from.

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Robyn Eagles: Sunday to think about Bud Light and what happened.

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Robyn Eagles: And as an executive in the C suite, I mean, you’re really only looking at the fact that you’ve lost significant market share, you’ve lost a significant customer base, you’ve had to lay off employees.

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Robyn Eagles: Your regional salespeople who are selling into.

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Robyn Eagles: The bars, they’re losing money. It’s hard to justify that even when.

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Robyn Eagles: You say it was one can sent.

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Robyn Eagles: To one person for one three minute interview. What could seriously the impact of that be? I don’t think anyone foresaw what was.

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Robyn Eagles: Going to happen there, not for 1 second.

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Robyn Eagles: And I don’t know how I would.

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Robyn Eagles: Have managed that either, because in Crisis.

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Robyn Eagles: Communications, we can go as far as to talk about crisis. I’ve had executives ask me how do we control a crisis?

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Robyn Eagles: What are we planning for? And I would say 99 times out.

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Robyn Eagles: Of 100, the crisis that happens is.

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Robyn Eagles: The one you didn’t plan for.

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Robyn Eagles: So when it comes to controlling the narrative, I think being able to take.

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Robyn Eagles: Risks, knowing what the risks are and.

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Robyn Eagles: Being okay with what negative outcomes might.

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Robyn Eagles: Happen is really part of the entire plan of this.

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Stacy Jones: Well, I don’t think anyone could have figured out Bud Light. It was just like a perfect storm between Kid Rock, between they’re not necessarily saying the right things on the brand side, between other people getting involved in it and that was just a mess that right now you are right. Our political environment, it’s scary. There’s not a lot of experience in the past that you can use to shed light on how something will play out.

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Robyn Eagles: I think Disney also is another example where they’ve gotten caught up. Whether it was what’s going on in Florida with their property in Rick DeSantis and the laws going on there to using LGBTQ folks in their films or just changing the characters and movies from maybe being white to being some other BIPOC type person and they’ve taken a lot of flak for it. But what I see Disney doing is.

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Robyn Eagles: Standing behind their user base, their customers.

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Robyn Eagles: And their own beliefs.

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Robyn Eagles: And I think that’s part of controlling.

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Robyn Eagles: The narrative for them is by letting people control their own narrative, but not Disney’s. Disney is controlling their own narrative by.

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Robyn Eagles: Sticking by their ethics, their morals, their.

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Robyn Eagles: Beliefs and their customer base and thereby controlling their narrative and letting other people say what they want to say. They know their own truth and they’re sticking by their own truth. So there’s two different ways to handle know. There’s a couple of ways. Like you said with Bud Light, it was a perfect storm in the company.

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Robyn Eagles: Not standing by its own choices. Correct.

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Stacy Jones: And so you mentioned a whole slew of different types of marketing tactics that people have screwed up the brand narrative with or been afraid to. Right. So what are some of the examples that you are referring to without naming.

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Robyn Eagles: Some of the companies that I’ve worked for, I’ve seen a whole lot working across the board in all of these different areas. We were looking at events to sponsor, but looking at the makeup of that event. And if it wasn’t, that’s not who we think our customer is.

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Robyn Eagles: But our customer can be anybody.

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Robyn Eagles: When you’re selling something as innocuous as a pen, let’s just say everybody uses a pen. You can’t just say that the people who write with your pen are all.

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Robyn Eagles: Going to be white people who are.

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Robyn Eagles: 35 and who have two kids. They’re never going to be that. So when you have a broad array of products, you really do need to look at a broad array of events and social media opportunities and utilizing all of the different populations to kind of get out there.

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Robyn Eagles: But I’ve seen in social media campaigns where we’ve chosen to not partner with.

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Robyn Eagles: A specific influencer because they wore a.

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Robyn Eagles: Shirt that had foul language on it in a video that they produced six months ago.

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Robyn Eagles: So it’s like, oh, no, we can’t.

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Robyn Eagles: Work with that person anymore.

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Robyn Eagles: My favorite one being hard, but that’s.

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Stacy Jones: Really hard because if you look at a lot of influencers and you go back, if you really want to dial in, you can find very often something, because they’re supposed to be real, authentic people. And so you’re asking instead for this kind of land of cleanliness and perfection because you want to put your brand on it. But in that land of perfection and cleanliness and not being necessarily authentic to their own brand and who they are, you’re losing out on why everyone actually is following this person.

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Robyn Eagles: Absolutely, without a doubt. I built some social media campaigns with influencers where I think in the earlier days of influencer campaigns, it’s like, oh, have them take a picture with our product. We’ll pay them ten grand for one post. This was maybe six or seven years ago.

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Robyn Eagles: I said, this is not how you.

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Robyn Eagles: Influence people with one post.

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Robyn Eagles: You influence people over time.

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Robyn Eagles: And so we had to give them.

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Robyn Eagles: The product and set up long term deals with these people. Working with Acura, were able to.

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Robyn Eagles: Set know really great long term deals with people. However, it did take a lot to find the right people that we wanted to use who had similar beliefs and values that we had. But I kept trying to convince the executives it’s not necessarily about having this person reflect our values so much as it is helping us to reach their audience and influence their audience, because that’s.

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Robyn Eagles: What’S going to make the difference in all of those KPIs that we’re looking to fulfill.

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Robyn Eagles: We’ve got to get that sale and we’ve got to get people interested. And so to reach this audience, we’re going to have to be more authentic. I guarantee you my executives use foul language outside of the office plenty. So to see one guy wearing that on his shirt or partnering with a celebrity on a long term deal, it’s like we can’t control what they do in their everyday lives, and we have to be okay sometimes with some of.

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Robyn Eagles: These smaller things that go on in those arenas.

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Stacy Jones: Sometimes the larger things like Bruce Springsteen Jeep, that was a big surprise when he unearthed the fact that he had a drunk driving incident after they’d shot the.

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Robyn Eagles: We.

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Robyn Eagles: You know, working for a car mean there’s a whole lot that goes on. The legal department gets involved with a lot of this stuff too.

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Robyn Eagles: So the legal department’s job is to mitigate risk.

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Robyn Eagles: And a lot of times it is interesting to have learned that after the fact, because I know that from our brand perspective. These are the types of things we.

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Robyn Eagles: Research and research well in advance to.

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Robyn Eagles: Mitigate these types of risks as we try to control that narrative and make.

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Robyn Eagles: Sure that at minimum, we know everything.

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Robyn Eagles: That could possibly go wrong so that we can prepare for it as best as possible. I’ve seen other areas, like I said.

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Robyn Eagles: Where we’ve had products where we want.

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Robyn Eagles: To put them in a film and we find out, oh, no, we pull it from the film. Pull it from the film.

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Robyn Eagles: But why?

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Robyn Eagles: Well, because it’s the villain who’s using.

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Robyn Eagles: The product, not the hero.

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Robyn Eagles: We can’t have the villain using the product, but in a lot of films, you’re rooting for the.

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Robyn Eagles: Good, right?

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Stacy Jones: And you had Jaguar and Land Rover who actually went the opposite, and they firmly embraced the fact that they could be the villain because they needed to be able to compete against brands that were in the luxury vehicle space, that had a lot more advertising power than they had. And they found their niche by actually embracing the bad.

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Robyn Eagles: Yeah, I mean, it takes a lot. And again, I think it behooves us as the brand leaders or the clients that are the agency to go in.

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Robyn Eagles: And really educate the executives on these.

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Robyn Eagles: Facts and help them to understand. I think they come into our marketing space a lot of the times, not understanding how to let go just a.

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Robyn Eagles: Little bit to reap benefits in the end.

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Stacy Jones: What are some other instances that you’ve seen?

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Robyn Eagles: Let’s see, I think I had a couple let’s see.

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Robyn Eagles: We lost a bunch of partnerships with brands or studios because of to.

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Robyn Eagles: We’d signed a deal with a specific celebrity who had just gotten a Netflix deal.

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Robyn Eagles: And the Netflix deal was going to give this actor, I think, four different series and upwards of a couple of hundreds of episodes. And we had signed a deal to go across all four shows in every episode, but were controlling what product.

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Robyn Eagles: They got to use.

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Robyn Eagles: So it’s like, hey, we have 15 products, but you can only use this one. They said, no, we want to use.

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Robyn Eagles: All 15 of your products across all these shows.

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Robyn Eagles: We can’t have the same product over and over and over in every show and every series. It’s just not how it works. And they’re like, well, if you can’t do it, then we’re going to be out. It took a lot of education to step back, sit down with the executives, and explain to them the benefit of having I know that we’re trying to sell this one product right now, but.

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Robyn Eagles: There’S this halo effect. It’s the brand, and you’re looking at.

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Robyn Eagles: The product versus the brand, and the.

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Robyn Eagles: Brand is often just as important.

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Robyn Eagles: Stop controlling the narrative on this particular product because you need to sell that now. And look at the brand overall, having.

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Robyn Eagles: A halo across the board and then helping the brand grow, which what is it?

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Robyn Eagles: Rising tides lift all ships this is.

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Robyn Eagles: A rising tide situation, and I dare.

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Stacy Jones: Say you’re dead right in regards to product placement being used for brand versus product. It’s fine for product, and it can get a product that is out there. But with timelines on films, things that pop up, delays, there have been so many instances where we’ve worked with a brand and they said, oh, third quarter of this year, of this next year, we need to have this brand out there and this campaign. And then you’ll see that the movie gets pushed or there’s something that else that changes or the brand’s timeline is no longer the same.

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Stacy Jones: So now, even though they promised the studio that they were going to promote during this window, they’re not launching because they had their own product delays, which happened a lot during COVID I will tell you, a lot of deals that were going on all went belly up then. So all of this is something that can be impactful.

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Robyn Eagles: Oh, yeah, we had sent a bunch.

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Robyn Eagles: Of product to participate in a movie.

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Robyn Eagles: And then the director pulled out and then they shut down the whole movie. And so we’re trying to recoup our money. And they kept telling us, hey, we’ll put you in a different movie. We don’t want to be in a different movie. We want to be in this movie. So there’s always things that go wrong. We can’t control it all of the time. We do our best, for sure, but.

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Robyn Eagles: It’S not all of it’s controllable.

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Stacy Jones: How do you think that CMOS and executives can be a little less fearful? Like, how can they feel safe to make mistakes?

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Robyn Eagles: I think there are certain steps you.

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Robyn Eagles: Can take to kind of take a.

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Robyn Eagles: Look at all of the things you need to do to understand how to go about this process and determine the risk and the reward of the opportunities being step one. Long before I even go sit down with any executive or pitch any program, I kind of have to sit down and think to myself, because the last thing I’m going to do is go in with a pitch and not have all the answers or at least be able to answer questions they might have.

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Robyn Eagles: So determine the risk and the reward of the opportunity. Second, determine the ROI or the brand impact. I mean, is this going to meet.

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Robyn Eagles: The brand impact goals and targets that we have? Because if it’s not, then regardless of how much money it costs or the time it costs, let’s not even consider that.

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Robyn Eagles: I like to discuss these concerns with other team members.

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Robyn Eagles: I don’t by any means know everything, nor am I going to think of everything. So I do like to sit down with whether it’s an agency, my internal team, other folks have worked on projects like this I might bring in who might not even be in my team and ask them, what do you think can go wrong? And we can brainstorm all of those things and we plot them.

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Robyn Eagles: I’ll create a matrix and we’ll plot.

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Robyn Eagles: Them on a matrix that’s like, here’s the positive impact versus the negative impact, the neutral impact in the middle. And then you kind of put that.

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Robyn Eagles: On a scale of likelihood of these.

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Robyn Eagles: Things happening or not happening in the positive, outweighing the negative by taking that risk. So you kind of create the matrix, the four square or the SWOT analysis, whatever you want to call it. And then you kind of again, we talked earlier. The one crisis that happens is never the one you plan for, but as best you can, plot out some of the bigger, more likely things that are.

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Robyn Eagles: Going to happen and figure out how.

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Robyn Eagles: You’Re going to combat that, not only externally with your audiences, but internally with the C suite. Because oftentimes those battles are about the same size.

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Robyn Eagles: And then figure out the other thing challenge I had, but it was a good one.

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Robyn Eagles: Sometimes you create so much demand, you.

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Robyn Eagles: Don’T have enough product to meet the demand.

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Robyn Eagles: I mean, that’s a good problem to have, but what are you going to do? Because you’ll lose out on sales if you overcreate demand. So you got to make sure you.

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Robyn Eagles: Can balance the right level of how.

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Robyn Eagles: Much product you have on hand versus.

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Robyn Eagles: How much demand you’re going to create.

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Robyn Eagles: And if there is a challenge, we.

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Robyn Eagles: Got to think about what’s the pivot.

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Robyn Eagles: We just talked about Disney and Bud Light.

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Robyn Eagles: I don’t know that they had any pivots.

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Robyn Eagles: I think they just kind of froze for a second and did what they needed to do. But again, Bud Light is still trying.

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Stacy Jones: To pivot and still trying to figure out what they’re doing. And again, no one has the answer to this one besides time.

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Robyn Eagles: I hope time helps that too. Although I did see that picture on social media of Kid Rock drinking a Bud Light last week. So apparently he’s over for that. I don’t know that he was, but we’ll see. Maybe that will come out too. But just again, I come back to when it comes to finding that sweet spot of controlling the narrative and controlling the outcomes, just educating the executives on what the possibilities are. Media. Train your executives. In a lot of cases where media.

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Robyn Eagles: Does need to speak for what has.

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Robyn Eagles: Happened or manage a crisis, you want to have the most empathetic leader you.

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Robyn Eagles: Can, not just the CEO.

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Robyn Eagles: And if your CEO is empathetic and.

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Robyn Eagles: Can speak to the challenge and speak.

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Robyn Eagles: To the customers authentically great. Ideally, in a crisis, I would look around to see who’s on your bench outside of the CEO or a marketing.

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Robyn Eagles: Lead who can talk about what this.

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Robyn Eagles: Really means to the consumers.

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Robyn Eagles: Stick to your brand.

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Robyn Eagles: Again, I feel like Disney kind of did it right where they knew who they were and they stayed authentic. We need to do that as brand.

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Robyn Eagles: Leaders to guide our C suite, to.

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Robyn Eagles: Stick with their personal brand and their company brand. And if there does need to be some kind of action plan after a cris happens, that there’s a person in.

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Robyn Eagles: Charge for each and every outcome, that.

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Robyn Eagles: You’Ve kind of plotted as high risk. But with great risk comes great rewards sometimes.

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Robyn Eagles: And managing the narrative correctly and managing.

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Robyn Eagles: The outcome correctly can mean all the.

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Robyn Eagles: Difference for a brand.

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Stacy Jones: I think it’s also with the brand having the knowledge and understanding that this happens that negative things pop up, and that other brands have made it through it, and that typically it is something that is cyclical and that will move on after something else comes into the news cycle really, and that catches eyes. I think what we don’t understand a lot right now is how social media really causes things to grow out of control. And we’re know, we saw that with COVID we’re seeing it with Bud Light, we’ve seen it with Disney, we’re seeing it with all LGBTQ plus across the entire world, not just with the United States.

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Stacy Jones: That we have now come to a time where communication is so fast that it used to be that if you had an issue and it came up, you were worried about reporters calling you and talking about it, and now you’re worried about the entire social feed talking about it and that it’s going to fire boom and get away from you. And that I think the biggest learning lesson, is, as you keep saying, that authenticity of standing by who you are and being a good human and a good brand and supporting your people and supporting your true beliefs immediately are the only thing that will protect you at all.

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Robyn Eagles: Yeah, an omnichannel approach in getting that.

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Robyn Eagles: Type of communication out there, being generating.

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Robyn Eagles: That authenticity not just in PR, but in social and through your experiential and through every touch point you have in your customer journey and plotting that. So we think sometimes building a brand or putting a product in a movie.

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Robyn Eagles: Or running a PR campaign or event is a single opportunity.

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Robyn Eagles: But at the CMO level, we know that we’ve built out a customer journey and it’s a long tail approach to how do we reach our customers and how are we going touch them across a year and a half of a product launch or a three year sustainment plan, even for a product or brand. And it’s all carefully plotted, carefully researched, and hopefully educated really well. But staying true and making sure that when you do have a cris or an issue, that you have an omnichannel.

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Robyn Eagles: Approach to talk to your customers, talk to the media, talk to your potential.

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Robyn Eagles: Customers, and just talk to anyone. But across all the platforms advertising, marketing.

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Robyn Eagles: Social experiential that same message has to come from everywhere for it to have an impact.

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Stacy Jones: I think as we are seeing these shifts, one of the big things for executives at companies is that they need more people around them that are smart and capable and who have the ability to give voice and show perspectives that are not necessarily the exact ones that they have. So that’s where agencies or other team members really can come in. Because when we’re looking at executives who are so in their own world and it’s myoptic and that’s where things will start going awry, typically, and I have a feeling you’ve had experience with that.

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Robyn Eagles: I’ve worked with various CEOs from plenty of startup companies to Fortune 100 companies. You can’t get through to all of them.

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Robyn Eagles: You can do your best. I don’t know.

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Robyn Eagles: I always call this type of thing.

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Robyn Eagles: Like Survivor Marketing Edition.

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Robyn Eagles: You have to build alliances to stay in the game and sometimes you have to figure out who your executives trust and who has their ear. And maybe sometimes you have to work through those people as well to really.

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Robyn Eagles: Get these points across to them.

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Robyn Eagles: In some of these big Fortune 100 companies, you’re not always going to get.

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Robyn Eagles: 30 minutes to an hour of the.

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Robyn Eagles: CEO’s time or global CEO’s time to sit down and walk them through all of these challenges that could occur and what risks are they willing to take and not willing to take.

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Robyn Eagles: So there is kind of.

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Robyn Eagles: Some risks we also have to take about what we bring to the table. But they’re not always willing to listen. And if they’re not, there’s things that we can do to reach them and we can try. It doesn’t mean it’s always going to happen. And that’s where you end up with.

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Robyn Eagles: Very conservative companies, conservative brands, not a.

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Robyn Eagles: Lot of risk taking. And I used to explain it, does a tree fall in the forest if.

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Robyn Eagles: No one hears it? And a lot of brands, they get.

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Robyn Eagles: Just about that line where they have trees falling every other day, but nobody hears it because they’re not making enough noise. They’re not participating in the conversation well.

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Robyn Eagles: Enough for anyone to hear it because they’re scared. They are scared and fear.

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Robyn Eagles: Look, I get it again, you market.

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Robyn Eagles: Share, stock prices, shareholder value is all they care about.

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Robyn Eagles: And trying to think about all of the other details about is this marketing.

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Robyn Eagles: Risk really worth losing half of my.

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Robyn Eagles: Stock price and losing my shareholders? In some cases, they’re not willing to.

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Robyn Eagles: Take any of those risks. But some risks.

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Robyn Eagles: There’s one I was just thinking about prior to this call that it’s one of the ones I love. Life gives you lemons.

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Robyn Eagles: You’re supposed to make lemonade wingstop. Do you remember what happened with wingstop during the pandemic?

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Stacy Jones: I remember something. I can’t even remember what it is. What was it?

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Robyn Eagles: Well, there was a challenge with supply chain and getting chicken wings. And somebody brilliant over at Wingstop said, you know what, we’re going to change our name for the next month because all we can get are Thighs. We’re going to change our name to Thighstop. That’s a brilliant pivot and it was a brilliant risk. I can’t even imagine someone going to the head of brand and saying, hey, I know we’re Wingstop, but we can’t get any Wings. We’re just going to change our name to Thigh. Stop. As a head of brand, I would go, no, you’re not.

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Stacy Jones: Find my wings.

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Robyn Eagles: Just get you find me Wings. We’ll get our way through this. It’s just a month. It’s the pandemic. I know we’ve got tons of online.

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Robyn Eagles: Orders, but this is no but. They did it and it paid off in spades.

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Robyn Eagles: And the fact that they got a.

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Robyn Eagles: Lot of PR, it did get a lot of PR.

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Robyn Eagles: I know another one, and you’re probably well aware of it, is Fiji Water at the Oscars.

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Robyn Eagles: And the blue was the fact that.

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Robyn Eagles: It was on that silver platter, she’s walking around. It almost fell out of place, so.

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Robyn Eagles: Much so you couldn’t avoid it. That was a risk.

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Robyn Eagles: Whoever.

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Robyn Eagles: Kudos to these people who took those risks.

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Robyn Eagles: And one of my favorite social media.

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Robyn Eagles: Risks by far was when the lights went out at the Super Bowl years.

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Stacy Jones: Ago, oreo stepped forward.

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Robyn Eagles: Yeah, it was Oreo Dunk in the dark. And I think to myself, when I was working at a Fortune 100 company.

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Robyn Eagles: In the social media team, all of.

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Robyn Eagles: The posts were planned. It was very different back in the early days. I think now there’s like a war room where we can make timely decisions and put stuff out because we understand timeliness. Back at that point in time, this.

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Robyn Eagles: Was like seven years ago, all the.

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Robyn Eagles: Tweets and all of the posts were planned. Nothing was ever going to happen ad hoc because we didn’t want to deal with risk.

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Robyn Eagles: But Oreo showed us that being timely.

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Robyn Eagles: Spur of the moment can help the.

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Robyn Eagles: Brand know, instead of control, they perfect narrative, well controlled and well timed, but probably without approval, made all the difference in the world for Oreo.

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Stacy Jones: And luckily, they had someone on staff that was actually funny and helped.

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Robyn Eagles: Funny wins every time.

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Robyn Eagles: I’ve been saying that for years. Funny wins every time. And I think it’s great for brands to exercise humor in every way, shape or form. When I was at Honda, if I could tell a brief story, one risk were able to take, we pushed the limits on this one was an April Fool’s joke.

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Robyn Eagles: We were launching the Honda HR V.

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Robyn Eagles: And were trying to garner greater audiences in like the Millennial and Gen Z category with that vehicle. And at the know, taking selfies and posting on social media was super hot. So for April fools, we launched the HRV Selfie Edition. We worked with RPA Ad. Agency to create a campaign where we created videos and we made the world think for a hot second that were launching a car that had selfie cams all over the car. So at any point in time you.

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Robyn Eagles: Could take pictures of yourself and post.

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Robyn Eagles: Them on social media. I recall a legal department and some executives said, that’s not safe, and we’re promoting not safe actions in the car. We don’t want people taking pictures of themselves while they’re driving. That would be not clearly it was tongue in cheek. We were able to get that pushed through and it was a very successful brand campaign and reaching the audience we wanted to reach, shareability visibility, brand awareness.

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Robyn Eagles: All clocked up based on that campaign.

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Stacy Jones: And again, because it was relatable and it was funny.

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Robyn Eagles: Yes, I think that’s one of the.

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Stacy Jones: Reasons why Ryan Reynolds, take a look at him and his brand, right. Everything is relatable and funny, brand after brand.

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Robyn Eagles: By using that, everything Ryan Reynolds touches is funny. He’s naturally funny. So having him involved in your brand in any way, shape or form is always going to be great. He’s just one of those personalities and I’m sure he commands millions for it.

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Stacy Jones: But even know his agency was involved. When you had the Peloton incident on Sex in the City, the new generation of it, with Mr. Big, who had a heart attack after being on at Pelton, and they switched.

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Robyn Eagles: They came to the rescue. They’re like, we have a plan.

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Stacy Jones: We’re going to shoot a commercial with Mr. Big and the Peloton instructor and we’ll see this afterlife moment for him. And then you had rolling out this whole inappropriateness that he’s been charged with. So it happens. Even to Ryan Reynolds.

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Robyn Eagles: Yeah. That also goes back to this whole.

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Robyn Eagles: Idea of not letting the villain or.

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Robyn Eagles: If the guy had a heart attack on the Peloton, doesn’t mean everyone’s going to have a heart attack on a peloton. But they went with it and they fed that narrative. Like I said, there’s controlling the narrative and there’s over controlling and then there’s that Goldilock sweet spot. And I think in that particular situation.

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Robyn Eagles: They overcontrolled it in the wrong direction.

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Stacy Jones: They dove off all of their market share. I mean, that was a stock crisis and happening. They had other issues going on at the time. It was probably dialing in and causing that attribution of clients and using, but it was a nightmare with what they actually did.

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Robyn Eagles: Yeah. Controlling the narrative is not always easy, but it shouldn’t be done in a vacuum. It shouldn’t be done as a single decision maker. The CEO, while he definitely has the final decision, in a lot of cases, taking the time to pitch these things and understand those opportunities and risks versus rewards will help brands and marketers make good decisions.

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Robyn Eagles: And again, if the decision comes out.

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Robyn Eagles: And something does go wrong, stick with who you are. Stay authentic to your brand, back up your brand and your brand beliefs. I think it’s when you waffle and you go back and forth and you’re not really sure who you’re supporting, whether it’s yourself, your customer, your brand or your shareholder, is when you see some.

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Robyn Eagles: Of these people get in trouble.

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Stacy Jones: So, Robin, sounds like a great time for you to share how people can get in touch with you.

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Robyn Eagles: You can get in touch with me through my website, which is Gtmsc.com.

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Robyn Eagles: There’s a contact me on that website.

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Robyn Eagles: Or you can reach me at robin. You can reach me through the [email protected], there’s a contact me section on that.

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Robyn Eagles: Website, or you can email me at [email protected]. Good.

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Stacy Jones: So what would be your last parting word of advice to our listeners today in regards to taking risks with your brand narrative?

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Robyn Eagles: Make sure you build out that chart where you can balance your risks versus your rewards and how well you’re going.

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Robyn Eagles: To meet your overall goals, building out that four square and helping your executives.

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Robyn Eagles: Understand what those risks versus the rewards are. I think most executives respond well to data. So when you have this chart, you’ve got plotted out what’s high risk, what’s.

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Robyn Eagles: Low risk, what’s going to reach your KPIs and what’s not.

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Robyn Eagles: You have backup for all of the issues that could go right and could.

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Robyn Eagles: Go wrong, and you have all of.

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Robyn Eagles: The I’s dotted and T’s crossed. I think you’ll be able to really reach the C suite and help them.

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Robyn Eagles: Understand that you’ve done your homework, you’ve.

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Robyn Eagles: Researched every possible outcome and you understand what’s going to reach the audience, achieve.

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Robyn Eagles: Those goals and mitigate the most amount of risk.

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Robyn Eagles: But again, I really believe controlling the narrative is important, but over controlling it.

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Robyn Eagles: Can really hurt your brand.

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Robyn Eagles: So take a little bit of risk, but not too much, and make sure that whatever happens on the backside of.

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Robyn Eagles: That, you have a response for.

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Stacy Jones: Well, Robin, thank you so much for joining us today. I had a lot of fun chatting with you into the whole world of risk.

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Robyn Eagles: Thanks for having me.

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Robyn Eagles: I appreciate it.

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Stacy Jones: Of course. And to all of our listeners, thank you for tuning into another episode of Marketing Mistakes and how to avoid them. I look forward to chatting with you this next week. And until then, Robin and I spoke a lot about product placement. If you have interest in understanding how product placement can be a non risk for your brand, reach out. I’d love to chat. Have a great one.