I'm Sorry But Flash Mobs Are Back

Plus four post formats to try right now, how to build "brand energy" on social, and more.

Helloooo! I am on the road and driving around New Jersey this week. I ate fried hot dogs at Hiram’s Roadstand, perfect burgers at White Manna, and am now on my way down the shore for a few days. I love New Jersey but if anyone wants to invite me to Cannes Lions next year, you have my email. The schedule looks a little light on social media professionals IMO. We could put together a great panel.

Before we get into today’s newsletter, I want to talk about The Sociology of Business’s guest post from Grace Gordon on building cultural hits. In it she talks about how Charli XCX’s “BRAT” highlights the success of packaging up a cultural product with its most committed community front-of-mind and allowing them interpret and build your brand energy for you.

It’s something I think about a lot when it comes to brand social. Who is all of this for?

I’ve built social strategies that reference lore and inside jokes and IYKYK humor. Strategies that make existing fans of the brand feel very seen. Still, executives often question if that niche content is attracting a new audience. You know, the people who aren’t already familiar with our brand?

In Grace’s case study, she argues that allowing (and empowering) your existing fans to tell your brand story is a more powerful attractor than doing so via your owned social.

Something that stood out to me was this idea of Authenticators—people who help contextualize a brand and validate it in real time. She writes, “While endless online endorsements (with tik tok shop links layered on top) dilute brand credibility amongst more discerning buyers, Authenticators contextualize a brand and validate it in real time.”

By building a social presence that empowers Authenticators to be post sharers, product reviewers, and brand advocates, you are giving your existing fans the tools they need to help your brand attract a new audience.

Importantly, and something I think a lot of brands forget about on social, is that for all of this to work, the URL version of the brand needs to feel like the IRL version of the brand. “BRAT” works because it feels like Bushwick, because it is Bushwick—as Grace says, “she served it up for her fans as a fuel for those living and aspiring to the lifestyle she is singing about, wherever they might be.”

A lot of brands build an aspirational, out-of-touch version of their IRL brand online. It’s why social presences like Gap feel so confusing to the consumer—I think about this tweet a lot that says “This disconnect between this (and most retail creative—jcrew especially) is the in store experience is so so removed from how the brand presents itself offline. It shatters the fantasy. You can walk into any gap in the country and it won’t feel like this.”

With brands I’ve worked on, the closer the social is to the experience of the actual super fans, the more it resonates. Hey, I’d love to see a series from Gap that’s in an actual dressing room versus some set they build. Let me see myself in the online version of your brand!

Finally, you can’t talk about BRAT without talking about shareability. Like I’ll write about later on in today’s newsletter, brands must find ways nudge their fans to share. “Using both online tools (the brat art generator) and the offline BRAT wall in Brooklyn, Charli handed the ‘roll-out content’ keys over to fans. The result is an almost endless supply of memes which is a dominant language of relevance in 2024. The viral green color has become immediately recognizable as a ‘BRAT’ signature, with the lowest possible lift for participation in either physical or online expressions.”

I am now thinking about how color, a lo-fi design language (“Going with something so lo-fi invites every corner of the internet to participate and enables those who want to be a part of the dialogue to share their own Brat-inspired memes and commentary”), and more can all influence how your biggest fans choose to share your content. How does a brand not only hand over a megaphone to their audience but also turn up the volume?

Image from The Sociology of Business

When brands build social strategies for their biggest fans, they are reaching new customers and audiences. Not through their owned content, but by giving permission for their followers to Authenticate. And it works. After seeing friends share songs from BRAT on their IG Stories, attend the concerts, and make memes—I’ve been listening to the album on repeat.

How can you bring more brand energy to your social presence? I highly encourage you to read Grace’s entire case study. It’s so smart.

Okay, let’s get into today’s newsletter. We are covering:

• Cheez-It gave me all the details on how this post (and caption) with Lindsay Hubbard came about 👀

• Four trending video formats, memes, and more for brands to try

• What makes someone comment on a post? Share a post? DM a post? This is how I optimize for the action I want

• Why I think flash mobs are coming back

• 12 loose links, posts, and things I am digging. Including Glossier’s TikTok live giveaway, an important influencer brief reminder, a brand collab idea for Chappell Roan, and more.

How The Cheez-It and Lindsay Hubbard Collab Came About

I asked Chelsea Merrill, Manager of Branded Content at Cheez It, about how this sponsored post came about. Below is our mini interview.

Rachel Karten: Hi! Okay, I have to know how did this collab come about? It’s such a timely idea.

CM: Our agency partner approached us with the opportunity after noticing Carl’s post. We were gearing up for some influencer content, and it felt like the right product, partner, and timing for us to engage. Our team is constantly seeking out relevant cultural moments for our brand to shine so we were excited to have a great way to connect with reality TV audiences.

RK: Are you able to share a bit about the caption writing process? Loved that she referenced it in her next post.

CM: One of the things I love about our agency and brand partners is that we give our creators the freedom to be creative. Lindsay proposed a caption that was spot on, and we collaborated with her to perfect it. She was fantastic to work with!

IYKYK

RK: I think the future of influencer marketing is being a lot more nimble/flexible with your dollars vs locking a campaign long in advance. Curious how this performed for the brand and how it fits within the overall influencer strategy!

CM: For all our social efforts, we aim to stay nimble and agile. This is a prime example of how working quickly benefited us. We saw excellent engagement and conversations around the product. For flexible partnerships like this, we ensure they align with our broader strategy, which contributes to our success. We’d never want to show up in a way that feels random or inauthentic.

RK: Can we expect any more collabs with Lindsay?

CM: You’ll have to wait and see, but we can’t wait for next season of Summer House!

Three Trending Video Formats, Memes, and More

1. “We let the Gen Z intern edit the video”—examples here, here, and here

2. “When _____”—example here and here

3. “Me watching” “Me recommending”—examples here and here (would buy different stock images or use stick figure drawings to be safe)

4. Unbagging a message—examples here and here

How to Optimize for the Action You Want People to Take

The goal with most social posts is to inspire some sort of action. Maybe that’s getting someone to comment. Maybe that’s getting someone to DM to a friend. Maybe that’s getting someone to share to their IG Story. Different posts lead to different actions. I thought it could be helpful to go through what makes a certain post lead to a certain action. Let’s do it.

What kind of post makes people want to comment? A post that is optimized for commenting usually is asking something of their followers or presents a situation that makes followers want to weigh in. Maybe that’s a teaser puzzle like HelloFresh posted (this is apparently their most commented on organic post of 2024). Maybe that’s a “use your birthday” style meme like Nolita Dirtbag posted. Maybe that’s a “tag your favorite [insert astrological sign]” post like SSENSE did here. Maybe that’s a “please pick one” layout like this one from Chipotle.

What kind of post makes people want to DM to a friend? If I had to guess what the most common text that accompanies a post being sent to a friend it’d either be “you” or “me”. A post that describes an action or behavior that makes someone (or their relationship with someone) feel seen. Like this post from Wingstop that riffs on being the friend that watches sports for the food. Slight tweaks in language can help too, like the way Taco Bell uses “us” in this post which makes it perfect for sending to a friend. Or this post from the audio erotica app Quinn that someone might feel more comfortable DMing to a friend vs tagging publicly.

What kind of post makes people want to share to their IG Story? A share to a story is a reflection of yourself. People share posts to their stories because it signals something about them—an obsession, a quirk, a quality—that they want others to know about. This one from CAVA is the more direct example, we made a pin meme that quite literally allowed people to say on their story that they bullied us into opening in Chicago. This post from Sephora identifies a universal truth that people can never own too many lip glosses and plays into it with a shareable meme.

Obviously there are exceptions to all of these rules! People share things because they are creatively interesting or an announcement or enraging. My point here is more to highlight the motivations behind why users take certain actions with posts and how you can work backwards from there.

12 Loose Links, Posts, and Things I Am Digging

1. Just a reminder to build influencer briefs with the understanding that they might get accidentally shared. So, uh, maybe don’t include that the ad disclosure "can be shrunk down and hidden so it’s not super noticeable.”

2. ‘No Talent Involved’: How Bad TikToks Boosted a Curry House in NY Times. Urban Tandoor, an Indian restaurant in southwest England, is using music video parodies made by its staff to bring in new and younger guests.

3. SKIMS x Nicola Coughlan is good. I would personally love to know the timeline for these collabs. These always feel so timely that it makes me think they hold budget for last min shoots like this.

4. The other day I noticed Glossier was live on TikTok. When I went back to their profile, they had promoted it with a post and caption that read, “Join us and @juliaakong this afternoon on TikTok Live to chat allll things Lip Line launch 💬 Unbox + swatch the 8 shades, plus stay until the end for a giveaway!” There were about 200 people watching when I tuned in. Kind of interesting to incentivize viewership by announcing a giveaway at the end.

5. Curious what you all think of the tone of this Partiful tweet?

6. A very good reminder (and related to BRAT) that IRL cool things make for some of the best social content. For example, why do I feel like there’s going to be a resurgence of flash mobs? Recently there was one that was set to “Looking for a man in finance”. I did a quick count and the TikToks that were posted of it have cumulatively almost 17M views. TBH if a finance bro lunch company had sponsored that flash mob and had them all holding bowls it would have been genius…

7. Celtics social continues to be the best.

8. Okay, NY Liberty too!

9. Bratz is so quick. I am curious which brand will be the first to partner with Chappell Roan in a big way. A brave car brand could show off the amount of leg room with a “knee deep in the passenger seat” reference!!!

10. BTW @mishaspice did all the graphics for Chappell Roan’s Gov Ball set—curious if she works with brands at all.

11. Love a brand that moves quickly. Chipotle add the “Chipotle Boy Bowl” to their menu for a limited time. Flash mob to promote it when?

12. The promo images for the show Ren Faire creative directed by Chris Maggio and Pablo Rochat are so goooood.

That’s all! Check out new listings on the Link in Bio Job Board and see you in the Discord! Thursday’s interview is with the San Diego Zoo and it’s very fun.