Featured Session: From Meme to Meaning: Making the Most of Accidental Virality

Hello everyone, and welcome. My name is Emma Darrow, and I am part of the conference programming team here at South by Southwest. Thank you all so much for being here with us today. Before we get started for this session, we'll be running our audience Q and A through Slido. You can access it by opening the session in the South by Southwest Go app or the web schedule. And looking for the engage button where you can submit upvote questions for our panel. Today's session is from "Mean to Meaning: Making the Most of Accidental Virality." In today's fast moving digital landscape Brands can suddenly find themselves going viral in ways they never expected. This conversation will explore how teams navigate those unexpected moments online and turn them into opportunities for creativity, connection, and real cultural impact. Our panelists will also share what it takes to respond quickly, stay authentic, and make the most of those sudden impactful viral moments. Please help me to warmly welcome our amazing speakers: Kim Gallagher, Executive Director of Marketing and Customer Success at NewE; Rachel Carton, author of. The Lincoln Bio Newsletter, Gabby Fowler, senior manager of social and influencer at Graza, and Casey Lewis, trend analyst and founder of Macro School. Thank you everyone for being here. Um I'm Casey. Just quickly Go down the line. Sure, I am Rachel. I write a newsletter called Lincoln Bio. I am Gabby. I am a lead social influencer at Grasa, and I am Kim. I work for Newly overseeing marketing. So let's kick it off with a question for everyone. : Virality means many things to many people. I guess in each of your organizations or in your world, what does it mean to each of you? We're going to start with Rachel. Sure so. I mean, I think it's a yeah, it's a very overused word, But I sort of define it by a piece of content that gets a lot of views, reach engagement in a very like condensed amount of time. And then also has some sort of like cultural impact. So, maybe it's a TikTok that went viral, but people on Twitter are talking about it or you're sending it to your group chat being like, did you see this? Um and yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. I agree that is certainly overused Used a lot, I think. Yeah, Its most basic definition is a piece of content that got shared again and again and again. I think for us, virality is not a strategy in itself. We focus more on shareability. That's actually a KPI that we track is making sure that we're leaving space in our content calendar for content that can be shared. And I think that's what leads to virality when that's done well and. And so, that's kind of how we look at it. Virality is a result of that and optimizing for that in our strategy. Yeah, yeah, I just add that you know I think from a brand perspective, virality is the moment where honestly you lose control. You no longer as a brand have control over your own brand your narrative. It kind of gets handed over to your customer and and you have to have a little bit of trust. It can be a little scary but it can also be really great. Building off of that, You had a moment in late twenty twenty four, where a newly customer sat in something very unpleasant on the subway in a pair of newly jeans. You guys reacted brilliantly. Tell me a little bit about that, how you decided to react in the way that you did, what the internal HQ was doing when all of that went down. Well, Well, I guess I should take from just so I have an understanding how many people have heard of Newly. Okay, so not everyone. So it's a subscription rental company. It's part of the Urban Outfitters family of brands, so Urban Outfitters, Free People, Anthropologie, Nuuly is the newest brand. So just a little context. We, so you know, as these things happen, it was a Saturday night. I was about to go to a holiday party and I got a Slack message from a colleague saying this is starting to blow up. And you know, you are just like I have to click this, but I do not want to. So basically, there was this meme format that was very popular at the time on TikTok. It was a fabulous muppet and kind of set to the tune, like a prayer of relaying of the most embarrassing story of your life. It was the meme. This particular one was told in great detail with great writing. In a very humorous way, And the story was a woman who was riding the subway in New York and sat in a pile of human shit. Now, where does newly come in? She was wearing newly jeans. So we hadn't actually done anything wrong, But were a main character in the story even more so because were a new brand, and a lot of people didn't know who were. So. The comment section is blowing up, tagging newly saying, "Well, first of all, being like people rent jeans." So it was great brand awareness. But a lot of people are those jeans still in your circulation? What's happening? How could you how can people rent these? So, um we you know. So of course, the slacking begins and I told my husband to go to the party without me because I need to I'll meet you there. Um, and we were trying to figure out what to do. But the reality, if any of you in the room, um. oversee social media. Sometimes it's hard to do something immediately, and you shouldn't always. Sometimes you need to let something breathe, so that's what we did. We said, "Let's check back in in the morning, see where this is going." I went to the party in the morning; it hadn't gone away, but we still decided to let it breathe a little. Let's wait until Monday when we're all together in the office. I do you know there is a lot that can happen. happen over the internet. In some cases, There is some good creativity that can happen when people get together in a room. And the creative team reports into me and they oversee the social content. And they were, well, we have a big brand campaign coming out; we're really busy. And I was like, "This is the new brand campaign; like let's focus on this; it's really important." Um, and they did and they kind of killed it with the response. They They took the same meme format, and they turned it around from the perspective of the social media manager. The social media manager who had seen this meme and had to course correct. And, what we tried to do is get across the key message that was important for people to hear : " T, he jeans were not in circulation. We have stringent cleaning and inspection protocols. " Customer service has been in touch with this customer and reminded them that if this happens again, you. Probably should just reach out to us, and we don't want your genes back. So, all of these things we hit these key points, and the response itself went viral, which was really incredible. Honestly, We could see that it was one of the peak moments for newly brand awareness throughout our history. It translated to signups; I have to imagine. Yes, it did. Yeah, should be was written in "How did you hear about that? " Gabby You guys had a similar viral moment with the exact same meme format. Actually. Actually, Tell me a little bit about how you guys engaged with this meme that wasn't actually involving you, but made it your own. Yeah, yeah. So different than newly we weren't directly mentioned. Garza was not said in this story that Megan posted, but olive oil was. And this story is crazy; it's harder to summarize. It is about somebody who. Did an olive oil hair mask, um, And put so much olive oil in her hair and then wrapped it in saran wrap. Um, And then proceeded to slip on the olive oil that was on the floor from putting, said olive oil hair mask in. Um, and it just created this crazy chain of events. She slipped on it, she passed out I think. Um, and it ended. It culminated in her uh. Going to take a shower in the morning to wash the olive oil out of her hair, and the water line had like stopped working, And so she had to go to school with this olive oil in her hair. Um, And so I think for us, it was more. So. You know, this is any all over can be business. Um, so it was a sprint. It was, you know, we have to be kind of first to get into this. Um, This happened I think Friday late Friday or early Saturday um and were slacking all weekend about, you know. We went in early Monday morning. We were like, "Okay, it's a school day. We'll start meeting." Um, we sat in a brainstorm the first eight in the morning. We were all starting out thinking like things that we realized was like, first and foremost, we have to get across our experience that reached out to her. We found out she was in New York and I think our office is in New York. So we were like, "Okay, great." Let's deliver all the oil to her today. But we didn't just stop there. We named it "Flip and Tizzle, " and it's our olive oil girl that you see on all of our bottles. But she has a Saran wrap head with the olive oil mask, and yeah, she's flipping on olive oil. And, we like had that printed at a local printer. ;. We ran to get it, we delivered it to her door in the olive oil suits, and we documented that whole process and posted that on social. And then. We also worked with her a few days later to redo her hair mask with gross olive oil. This time, with a much happier ending, and it was great. People were like, "Wow, your hair is actually really shiny." I am like, "If you are putting this in your hair this must be great olive oil." So it worked out really really well for us. I think people really appreciated the speed also, which is something that it's important for us. But people also. The comments will be like, "This was so bad. How did you do this so bad?" And so yeah, it was great. But I think that what allowed that to happen was that we have a structure where I think our leadership team understands the importance of us acting on these very quickly. They don't make us go through a very lengthy review process. I think there is a lot of trust in what we do and us saying, "Hey, we have to just run with it." which is which is how these moments happen, I think. You have to have that in place. Um, yeah, but it was very fun. I am, curious : have any of those moments where you sort of run with something because the management kind of entrusts you has it ever flopped? Flopped as in like doesn't perform? I guess that's the question. :. Is it a flop if it doesn't perform, but you are still experimenting? No, no. I mean, i think I think going forward is success and that's how you learn. But um, I know i know. It's always there's always a learning that comes out of it, and and so in that case, it's never a failure. I think we can always like grow from it. But yeah, great question. And, another thing we would to all to would be to always have life stuff, but life size, Grolsch olive oil bottle later on the office, or whatever your your right, right, our our olive oil costumes that's helpful as well. Rachel, You've studied hundreds, if not thousands of brand social strategies through your newsletter. Um what? When a brand goes viral, What separates it from one that really just excels and and is able to build on that moment versus the first one that's possible? I feel like this conversation, Like having some context just around the way that algorithms have sort of changed this. And I've worked in social for thirteen years. And you know, as a social manager, if somebody came up to me was like, "We're blowing up right now," it used to be like, "Well, how many followers do they have?" And how much influence do they have? does not matter anymore in these sort of like supercharged like interest-based algorithms. If it is going viral, they might have two thousand followers, but it's still getting millions of views. And so as a brand, you can't care about how many followers that person has. Everyone is an influencer today. And so I think that's important to remember. And also I think that a lot of brands might view these moments as more of like an inconvenience than an opportunity. They would have this campaign going on, like let's just leave a few reply and move on. Um, I think about I interviewed the social person at Top Golf earlier. And there was this amazing thing where a, like net fell um in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It was like somebody documented it. Somebody commented Logan being like my work hard is here next week, like get better to back up and it got a hundred thousand likes. And that was an opportunity where Top Golf could just be like yeah, I'll like it and move on or you can, is our moment. Um, and they really ran with it. They threw Logan the best work party ever, and I am sure that that performed better than anything that they had planned. Um, And so I think that a lot of brands sometimes would just sort of like take it to A when you should take it to Z. Um, these are moments that uh your audience remembers, right? They're like, "That was so fast," or like "Damn." I also talk a lot about how consumers have never been like more aware about how marketing works right now, and they want your brand to succeed. They want you to like come back with that really perfect response. And so, um, I think that it's really important as social media leaders just to understand that and be like, yeah, Let's get in the war room and like figure this out right now because this is a big moment for us that we can't think back to ourselves. It shows what the brand's good at. Yeah, I mean you guys launched with. massive influencer seeding program, the likes of which I don't know that I've ever seen. And I know lots of brands have tried to follow suit. I am curious because it was among the first to do it at that scale. What gave you guys the confidence to go forward and launch that way? Yeah, um, I think two things really. I think the first thing, and this is maybe kind of an annoying answer but um, uh, I think there is a deep belief in the product that starts all the way at the top. Um, we care and we put so much effort into making the product very, very good. And. So I think that takes the pressure off the marketing team because our job is to just get it into people's hands. We don't have to, you know, try to do so much selling. We really believe that if people would just try it, they'll love it and it'll eventually hopefully earn a space on their counter. And so I think that's the first thing. But the second thing is that Grozov has always known who it is and What problem it solves and who it's for, from the second we found it, which I think is really unique. It's olive oil for anyone who cooks, and that is very broad. But I think that also knowing that, and even me coming into this role when I did two years ago, It really gave me permission to cast a very wide net because I know what success looks like. It looks like this olive oil being in everybody's hands not just. Chefs, but also home cooks, and your favorite comedian on TikTok and the fashion influencer that you follow. We really wanted to be everywhere, and I think when that is so clear, and I think you know social teams should advocate for this too. It's like you should know who you are talking to. And that should be set for you so that you can step into the role confidently like what you are saying. And I think it was very clear from the beginning and it allowed us So, The end end even now to to take big swings like this and to know you know what what success really looks like in that way. That makes sense. Um, can similarly the club movie program that you guys have, you work with influencers with followings as small as two thousand. I am curious how you guys operationalize that? And like how what's the managing like what's the strategy like It's all over my feed. So it's working. It you know the truth is that it's it's. Somewhat manual, And it means investment in a team and believing in creators and influencers as a key part of your marketing strategy, which we have done since day one. I think that the reason why we've gravitated more towards, I guess, smaller scale influencers and creators. I think some of it is kind of the common known reason, which is that these people have real true relationships with their community. They also are more they use newly that's really important to us that they're people that actually find utility in our brand and love our brand. So there is a natural advocacy. But I'd say even beyond that, Something that's maybe a little bit more unique to our business is that we have five hundred brands and twenty eight thousand styles. We were really conscious when we were building our business; actually, at first we thought. Maybe we should launch a rental business under the anthropology brand. And then we thought, wait, Someone that aggregates brands is going to win if there is winning in rental versus a single brand player. So we decided to be a multi-brand platform. But with that comes, we have to have a brand identity. Curation is important, but also we need to serve a broad audience. And you know what is the best channel for that? It's Influencer, So we can have we can work with creators who are pregnant and are using us for maternity, or college students using us for spring break or rush. Um, or you know the the cool edgy girl or the romantic girl. Like, we really can hit a very broad audience and show what newly has to offer. So it's been it's been wonderful for us. Yeah, what's the micro trends that you know do you see churn? Definitely, We and we are we're so lucky that we have the ability to kind of you name the trend. And we can spin up a curation um very quickly and and hit all of those trends. Yeah. Oh Rachel, you've written that follower growth is down but non follower views are up. What does this shift mean for how brands are building an audience in two twenty twenty six? I yeah I feel like this is the like question of the moment. I think, You know, a lot of brands right now are seeing that their follower growth has slowed. While the overall trend is that you know views are up, non-follower views are up. And I think you know when I first started in social, You grew followers ;, those people saw your content ;. You were creating content for them ;. They were already bought into your brand. And, you could sort of build inside jokes and sort of be able to tell your brand story on social. And now every brand needs to be thinking about what would make somebody who doesn't follow us. Because, that is the signal that's going to send it out further into the algorithm. And so, I think that it's a very weird switch for a lot of brands. I think a brand that does it very well, that I talked to a few times, is Figs. They're this scrubs company, and if you look at their social, You probably won't hear much about the quality of the fabric necessarily or how they're thinking about new styles. Their social is a like fan page for healthcare care workers. If you work in healthcare, like you want to follow their page, understand how to speak your language. Their campaigns are all across the level advocating for healthcare workers, And that's the sort of way that they find people to sort of come in. Um. And so yeah, I think that's a big switch from the way that a lot of brands have traditionally thought about what to use social for. Um but if you work in social, you probably understand like our followers don't see our content anymore. Um and it's very hard to break through. The like one thousand likes into the like thirty thousand, likes that you'll see some brands getting, And I think that it requires sort of a mindset shift of what the point of social is. And also, like influencer can be a much more targeted approach, And so you can use your main page for that sort of top funnel and then be able to use influencer as more of like bottom funnel, - like use case examples. And thinking about social not as it's supposed to do this one thing, and how can different surfaces of social do different things. no longer should your strategy revolve around what around your existing followers. Of course, it's not like ignore you guys like we don't like you. I, just think you have to put every piece of content through the lens of why would somebody who doesn't already follow us care about that? And sometimes that's just like taking a little bit further of a step back of like instead of um talking about something that's specific to our brand, Maybe it's an ingredient that our brand has, but is also an ingredient that lots of people love. And it's a joke about pickles instead of like. the brand name. It should be as simple as that, I think, to encourage shares. So I think one thing that a lot of brands are constantly trying to figure out is how do they show up on the feed? What is their brand voice? What is their personality? You guys have very distinct personalities. How, did you kind of arrive to what each of you is? And how do you kind of carry that through? And also at what point do you say this maybe isn't Graza, it isn't Noomi but we're going to try it anyway? I can start there. I think for us, it's for me, it's been really fun because Gralza tends to lean very chaotic, which I think that social actually kind of rewards right now, Which is like the chaos and the transparency. And just being so open with your followers and everybody that's seeing your content. Our core mission is to make an industry that felt very stuffy and very unapproachable feel. Approachable, and I think you know we take our product very seriously, but we don't take ourselves very seriously. And so everything that we do on social ladders up to that mission is approachability. And so I think a good example is we just launched mayo. ;. It's very good. If you haven't tried it. But yeah, it's great and we, We're shipping it out to people during a very cold time, And were noticing that when were shipping it to places where it was freezing, there was maybe some separation. So we had to film a more informational content piece about the separation. And I think even something like that, we're thinking of okay, how do we make this? This needs to be in our voice, and it needs to feel not just like any video from any brand. So he had our co-founder write a little. blur of a script that he wanted to say, we're like, we're just gonna film him. And at the end of it, he said, you know, this mayo is so good. We really just want it to knock your socks off. And so we're reading the script and we're like, he should be not wearing socks in this video. He should be in the kitchen without socks on just barefoot. So, he says that, and we like pan down to his feet, and he's not wearing socks. And, it's a great example I. Think of just like everything can feel, you know, like the brand when you know your voice, it makes it easy to run everything kind of like Rachel was saying through that. That unlock, like you know how how do we make this feel like us? And so, I think that also to the other side of it, It makes it easy to know what doesn't feel like you and what things you maybe just don't need to play into because it doesn't make sense. So, yeah, I think having a clear understanding of it. I'd say that some of the newly team members are definitely jealous of how chaotic Brabba gets to be on social. Super fun, and I think when we launched, we knew that fun was going to be a big element of the brand. And actually, our mission is getting dressed fun. But, we can't lean overly chaotic because we also are this service that is truly about reliability. So we have to consider that as a brand as well. So, but wit has been a very important element of our voice from day one. And you know what we learned is you can't fake wit. You actually just need to hire really funny, truly funny people. There is no other way. I do think something though that we've learned as we're you know, we've been around six years now. Is that what started with? You know, we just knew the brand so well, and we had the people that knew it. And you knew what was newly and what wasn't newly. Now we're a little bigger and we did need to kind of. think it through. What does it? What is the newly brand we needed to document? Like what are some of those words? And and really share it with the team. So sometimes you grow up and you realize that no, We can't just rely on these three people who have like a gut instinct for the brand. You know, brand books matter sometimes. And so we did I guess get a little bit more formal recently. I like that both of you basically say hire funny people, that's the takeaway. And something you know there's so much fear around. in jobs and AI simply can't can't replace a lot of people. Rachel, you've said that brands that do quote messaging karaoke, singing along to trends without their own voice get into the most trouble. How, do you develop a voice that's distinctive enough to be recognized but flexible enough to jump on these things? I think that you know for somebody talking about this accidental virality, it is ultimately a conversation. And so when somebody is. You know, talking about your brand, You do need to converse with them in a way that makes sense with the way they approach you. Just like you use the meme format back, which like maybe newly wouldn't have ever used that meme format right? But in that moment it felt like I need to match their energy back. Um. And so I do think that's really important to think about of it can still be how your brand shows up, but you can flex into the conversation, just like we do every day as humans, right? Of like okay they're showing up bubbly, like I'll be more bubbly than I usually am. Um, I think of brand, another brand. I feel like there's a lot of accidental virality happening like right now. One that's on my radar is PetSmart. And, there's this guy who's making these like metal songs about, is it PetSmart or is it Petsmart? And, they're these like really they're getting millions of views. And if I'm on the marketing team at Petsmart, I'm like hell yeah! Like they're not there's nothing wrong you know? Like there's no urgency here but it's really funny um. And so, The way that they responded was a little bit more like in their usual voice. I would say he's coming at them like heavy metal, And they're responding in like pure free things to like know about walking your dog energy, which is like great for day to day. But I think you literally had their audience being like, "Come on, do a metal song back to him!" Like you guys are a brand. I think that people think brands like you have the resources; you have the. Like this is your moment. And it's. I think. It's an important thing when you are in that brainstorm and everything's happening. Of like, if they had just taken a step back and said, "What is the coolest thing we could do?" and not like, "How would we usually respond?" I think that that might have come to a different sort of conclusion. So I think it really is about like that conversation matching the energy of how that person approached you. I think also something that in that example, PetSmart it was kind of like a good thing right? It was exciting but I think when there is a viral moment where. Maybe it could lean a little negative for the brand. I do think that just simply humanizing it in some way matters quite a bit. Like, we are all humans that work for companies that are the people that make the brands, And I think something that worked about our response was that it was from the social media manager's perspective. And, then all the comments from brands were those brand social media managers feeling seen in the meme. So I do, and even you know even beyond that, I think when we have issues, just reminding people that we're human. Um, it goes a long way. I have one other really good example of a brand that didn't engage in the last week. There's so many every week, I guess david David Protein just did a response that maybe is like, kind of the opposite of what you are saying, and it's getting people are liking it. I don't know they're they're i think they're in a lawsuit. And instead of sort of taking a serious approach to that, they made a like Mean Girls spoof about not all rumors are true. It was a little bit more of like a like snark back. And I was very i was interested to see that people responded well to it. So keep an eye on that; t here is still a lawsuit so Gabby, your packaging was basically designed to perform on social media with this These bottle, the colorful labels, the name "sizzle," "drizzle," and then you can riff on that for different social media moments. I am, curious, how much did your team think about the content of it all while designing that pack or putting it together? Yeah, I didn't design the bottle, but I can speak to it. I know that it was not created with the intention to. form on social was created to stand out on a shelf, on you know, amongst all the other bottles that we were sitting next to. And so I think that what was important is that it is part of what makes Growl's and distinctly Growl's. And. So it's part of our social strategy and how we talk about the brand. I think when people think of Growl's, they think about the squeeze bottle. And that's largely because of how yeah we've talked about it on social. We really lean into it. And our customers and our followers really care about that, and so yeah, we talk about it a lot. We switched over to glass. We actually posted a very self aware video of us. I think it was to the tune of you know how we're acting in the office now that we don't have to respond to the squeeze bottle plastic comments, and it's like. This slow motion video, like people are dancing, somebody's like popping champagne, um somebody's like kissing the glass bottle. Um and it it speaking of virality. Yeah, that's one of the the videos that ended up going viral. Um, it was very self aware uh and and I think also just aware in that, like we know we know what you guys say and what we're paying attention to everything that you're that you're commenting. Um And yeah so I think I think to answer your question it wasn't, Designed for social, but it is a very important part of our social strategy is the packaging. And similarly, the packaging from the newly so for those who have not used newly, You get six pieces once a month, and it comes in one very uh, very eye catching pattern uh package, which you you see it once you see it on your feed, you don't stop seeing it. Uh did you think about the social media? Well I I think we thought about package. Yeah, for sure. And, we knew that it was going to be one of our most definitive brand elements. Like, we're not a brand that has hero products. We have many, Many products and our inventory goes in and out of circulation at a moment's notice. So, you can't really stick like we can't just have one dress that people want, But the newly bag is what what our brand identity kind of rests on quite a bit. And, honestly, it was one of the earliest things that we had to do when we started. brand, there's there's significant lead time on packaging. And yeah, we hired someone and we were like, um, hi, welcome to Newly. You're going to be designing our our package today. Um. So not only was the brand um identity of the bag. Also how the clothes are folded in the bag was thought about because they're kind of folded in in like a Marie Kondo kind of six in a row. So that when you open the package, it's a very nice um reveal which. does do well on social media, so that was very, very well thought out. It's for a very aesthetic unboxing. Rachel, You've been an advocate for social media managers being taken seriously versus thought of as the intern. For the brand leaders in the room, What's the single biggest thing they are getting wrong about how they support their social team? This is more just top of mind right now, But I do think it is important. : is I was looking at some of the you know brands. people say are like best in class on social, And I was counting how many of their posts were either like campaigns or content that was supporting a campaign partnership, like new announcement. And I'll use McDonald's as an example, ; like seventy percent of their feed was campaign - related. And so often social managers are dropped assets at the end of a campaign, like here is a horizontal video for you to post. It's ten minutes. And so, I think that the best campaigns that I see are the ones that you can tell were made with social in mind. I think about, I just wrote up Gap's new campaign, and they had a director of their campaign. And then they had a director of the making of their campaign. And I would love to see more brands, let social managers in from the beginning concepting of campaigns, let them go to the shoot, shoot BTS, really build campaigns with them. Uh, what was the table? Have you gone from D to C uh to eleven thousand retail stores? And that how have you had to kind of rethink your social strategy as you guys have gone? So so mainstream? Yeah, we short answer that is we haven't really. But the reason why we haven't is because um the. The strategy from the very beginning was never about pushing sales on social. We see it as an awareness channel strictly. We want it to be where you know you discover the brand, you learn about the brand, you want to talk about the brand. Those are those are the goals really. And so I think that's, you know of course, the brand has gotten bigger. We have more resources now than we did at the very Beginning, but um, but yeah, I think it's it's just um it's been so great because as we've grown, we've we've maintained. I think the strategy is it will always be about reach. It will never be you know linking bio to not reach only linking bio. Um, But you know, every post that comes out of shop, you know, or the the product in this video is drizzle, and you can shop it at Whole Foods Market. Um and I think. Normally, social managers have to really, I think, fight for that and to almost educate on that. But it's been really great because leadership and everybody at Growl, I think, really understands that that's not our primary goal. So we can continue leaning against that as we grow. I mean, You guys are still very much a scrappy startup compared to someone like it's pronounced U R B N right? Urban Outfitters' parent company which New Leaf sits under. So how much does the corporate sort of overlords impact what you guys do, Or do you kind of have your own strategy? And can you even do what you want because you guys are scrappy in your own way. We do we do a little bit operate like a startup. Or people say "urban" and "ur-bian." I don't know. I mean, I go back and forth. Um, So I think we're we're lucky that we are. Uh so so Urban Outfitters was founded, I might have this wrong, but around fifty five years ago, um our the founder is. still the CEO, so there is a very much an entrepreneurial vibe in the company. It's, one of the I've been at the company for fifteen years and been able to do so many cool, unique things. But I think t here is a value for entrepreneurial spirit. T here is also a huge value for creativity. We do our creative almost exclusively in house, and you can feel the vibes if you come to our, Um, so newly all of the brands operate really independently, And any kind of cross brand relationships are completely just networking, like not nothing top down. Um, but newly was given the license to have its own tech team. Um, And also build. We had to build a lot of the logistics infrastructure in a different way because it's rental, and it's reverse logistics. Primarily, and we are a huge laundry dry cleaning facility. We do, I think we did over a million repairs last year, so it's just a very unique business. And we urban invested in us from day one. It's a very capital intensive business, and they went all in. Like I think if we had tried to launch rental the way a lot of legacy companies did, it felt for I saw a lot of companies do it, And that it felt like a strategy team's like project where they were just going to test it. And the reality is, you can't test it. If we had tried to test what we did, it would have failed. You had to say, " T his is what the consumer wants. ; this we know our customer ;. We know she will love this." Let's go all in and make a huge investment. And that's what they did. So I am very grateful for that, and it's paid off for them. Yeah, we're profitable yeah. So, This a question for everyone : a brand, not your own, whose social media presence, you genuinely admire. I can start. I think that Merit has really, really been killing it on social. The beauty brand, I think and You just did an interview with Merit, but before I read that i I was just like, "This just so crazy." It's almost like. Everything that they do, they are thinking about social first. Every campaign that they do, you know, every product they launch even it feels that way which is so rare. That's not typically how it works. I think like Rachel said, Normally, you feel like you're given a campaign at the end of it. And you're like, hey, just post this. I think Mary just struck me, as you know, I was like I'm. So curious what how they do this and then come to find out the CMO is what started in social. And so, I think that was really, I was like, "Wow, that makes so much sense." But they, I think they're just killing it in terms of leading with social, which I think is the way forward for marketing teams. Well, I am going to shout out a brand. We actually work with that falls on. We buy their product and run it under our umbrella and That's Fashion Brand Company. If you Do not know them. I really suggest following them on social. They they also have a little bit of chaotic energy, But um they they make these that they make really compelling kind of wild content. Um, They often partner with Joe Kappa, and we actually partnered with them for a really um wild holiday video that went a bit viral. And. Raised some eyebrows internally, but also was totally great. We were so so happy with it, But yeah, they do an incredible job on social and really believe in creativity and artists. I wrote about that video, Um and it was for the trend report that I published. And it was uh, the trend was like AI could never. And that video is AI could never. Like whatever brain came up with that video needs to be studied. Um a brand that I Meyer is Craig Hill. They are a small design company in New York that is like maybe fifteen people, and they are getting views that most Fortune five hundred would be jealous of. And, they have just committed to telling a story on social and creating content around their products that is interesting to anyone who's just like, "How do things get made?" And they've turned their product into. do a show essentially, and it's changed their business. And I admire that a lot of just how deeply they have invested in social. So much has been made about TikTok algorithm platform changes. If you guys were to post on only one platform forever for your brands, what would you choose and why? Maybe this is a little bit idealistic, and I don't know, you know i I don't know if If we really could commit to this, But what I would like to where I would like to post would be Pinterest. Pinterest is having a moment and and also really performing for us. I think it is a happy place. There's a lot of optimism in Pinterest, and I think people need that right now. But there's yeah, it also converts so we've been really happy with Pinterest. So interest um. I would have to say TikTok. It's so fun. Like, it's fun for me personally. It's fun to most fun, I think, to be on a branded channel and sharing content there. It just feels like there is less rules and I love, the kind of anything can happen. It could it's the same on Instagram, but more TikTok I think when you put something out um it's so entertaining going through the comments. And yeah I think I think you don't we at least are less precious. On TikTok, and that's always very fun. If I was advising a brand, it would probably be Instagram. Pretty different answers, and I belong to that. And why is that? I feel well, there is a bit of uncertainty with TikTok. I would say um with the new ownership, And so I just think that Instagram not that it's much better um is a little bit more of a stable choice, And I think that they are making uh tweaks to their algorithm for better or worse, that will surface. Your content as a brand, More. Are there any upcoming platforms that you guys are eyeing or not so much? I feel like there were a lot there for a while and then no. But I am curious, and I don't know if you, I am curious what your thoughts are about threads currently officially or off the record because you said, Instagram. I think that threads is a closed ecosystem and that if your brand or company has fandom. So, if you are in movie industry or sports, I think that those fandoms can thrive there. I find a lot of sort of like consumer brands, it's like talking to the wall a little bit. Even if the engagement is good, it's like not breaking out of the thread to other brands. That's what it seems like, yeah. Okay. For the last fifteen minutes, we have a bunch of questions from the audience and feel free to continue submitting your questions from Rukhel. We have when internet culture moves this fast. How do social teams stay culturally fluent without chasing? That's a great question. I would say absolutely don't chase every trend, and you know, make sure that your teams are all on the same page about that. I'd say that in order to chase a trend, It has to be one that you feel that your brand has a differentiated perspective on. I think that there was a time where everyone was chasing every trend. Now it almost feels dated to chase every trend. So, yeah, there might be specific use cases where I'd say go for it, but otherwise just don't do it. This next question kind of builds off of that. This is from M elissa : How. Do you tell the difference between a viral moment worth amplifying versus one that could damage brand trust? I feel like you kind of know it in your gut a little bit. Yeah, yeah. I mean like the Petsmart. I'm gonna go back to Petsmart. Like you know that is. You are really cautious about your brand. You could be like, "Well, people don't understand like how to say our brand name. Our logo is confusing to people. We shouldn't like further that." But the conversation's already started, and I think you do need to understand like the conversation's starting. You can either answer it or not. Um, but I do think for controversial things you kind of know. I think that brings up a really good point, which is how much in social you have to rely on your gut like there. There's not a rulebook, and there is, you know, it. Reading books and you know it can only get you so far. I think there is just a part of the job that you have to just ask yourself like, is does this feel like a good idea? Yeah, and sometimes you need to not respond and that's okay. And, you might be getting pressure from many people in the company that you should. But you have to say, just give this a minute and see what happens. And sometimes that means do nothing. Things move so quickly, and people forget very often. Peter wonders, "Are quote accidental viral moments now just another marketing tactic in the sky?" Could be. I think that there are brands who are manufacturing moments. I saw like an influencer brand being teased by some anonymous account zooming in on her having a conversation or something on the table, and I've seen um brands pay sort of, The talking head like gossip uh accounts to, you know, is this what we think it is? You know, it's a little bit hard when there's the paid partnership label on it. Um but I think that there are ways that brands could start sort of a rogue account or do something that manufactures this. I think you should have a very good team in place if that's your plan because it could maybe backfire. I love this question from Katie. What advice, do you have for mega brands that struggle to match the freak of social audiences because execs don't get the jokes? I would just say that one of the most embarrassing parts of working in social is needing to translate this into a deck. Of like, so here is what's happening: someone shit their pants. This is something for that incident, And you need to like be able to be the one that knows how to respond to it in a really like fluent online way. And, you also need to be the one who can like confidently explain it to your boss and also not feel like they're saying something stupid. Because I feel like I've like downplayed my ability to come up with a good plan by just being like, "No, it's stupid." You would have liked fine, and so I think like saying confidently. like you don't understand like this is what we need to do. We need to use this trending sound, or we need to like use this meme format. Like it's going to make sense, trust me. And like that's going to sell your idea through way more than like I don't know, it's kind of stupid but yeah, I also think that having just a general strategy that you're you know presenting and that you're talking about where you're maybe really making a case for why this needs to be done is really helpful. Like you saying, You know, maybe you don't know what you are reacting to yet, but we want to be able to react to these trends. We want this to be a part of the social strategy. And here is why. And here are some brands that do it really well. And you know, I can show you this example and this example and this example. I think that actually goes a very long way with people because it is, you know, some things are easy to explain and. I think if you can get people to buy into a strategy, it's easier than just these one-off moments that you are really trying to, you know, convince people to let you kind of play into. This is difficult, I will say. Agree. Agree. But I think your point :, if you have the ability to talk to your boss or your executives and at a time where it's not a viral moment and say, "Here is what I propose our guardrails are." And if we operate within these, will you trust us? You know, And if you can kind of build that credibility that you still do have rules and guardrails, but then you have a license to operate and operate quickly within that. I think it could work well. What lessons do you have from brand social reactions that have gone wrong? No, no lesson. I think this goes back to like trusting your your gut sometimes. I am like. I can't believe like they posted that, like they felt good about trying it, but yeah. And I also think depends on what's gone wrong here. Like, Is this completely like are you losing all your followers and is this terrible and it's crisis PR? But gone wrong can also mean that like it just didn't really work or it fell flat. And again, I think that like if you feel good about it, it's okay to go for it and maybe. go wrong and you learn from it, and that's okay. I think we can also be very precious and scared to It's a lot of pressure to own a be running a social account. Um, yeah, it's a good question. I feel like I've seen brands get defensive, and nobody likes a defensive brand. And so before you are defensive or rude or mean, taking a step back and saying like We're a brand posting, and this probably isn't going to look good if we respond with that." Is there any emotion more powerful than humor when it comes to creating viral content? I don't think so. I mean, I personally really love humor, But i I think of what I am seeing and you've written about this a bit, which is just like really leaning into to just like emotion, even if it's like very raw. Maybe it's kind of sad. Maybe it's like very honest. Trying to think of an example, but but I am seeing a lot of that right now. It's just people. It's not t here is nothing like funny about it, But it's just very real. And um yeah I think people also really appreciate that vulnerability. Vulnerability yeah I wrote about um like a public Mister Rogers marketing and just sort of like feel good content. And you know, t here is I've seen some examples where like a stadium will like. Be walking around with a ticket, like giving this to the like first person who takes it, And then they're showing that they're like so emotional to get to go on the field for the first time or whatever it might be. And I think something I've been thinking a lot about is like making someone's day, like is scalable on social. So as your brand, can you make someone's day and not for the sake of going viral, of course, but like spreading joy? I think is um in this climate, like very necessary and a way for also people to feel good about your brand. Someone wouldn't should have club with that for your social media. That was very bad. When a brand becomes the meme, how do you keep the conversation authentic instead of sounding corporate? I think the way that you have a social manager and be the voice, I think about like the McDonald's video is the corporate and how the social team kind of came up with a response that is clearly from them and not him, And so you can sort of use like a team member maybe as a way to. Are there engagement metrics that quietly signal a trend is losing energy before people notice, or are any programs that help you keep tabs on that? No, But I think I think you know if you are following. And this is why I think it's also important, not just for social managers, but we have like. Slack channels for info, and we have those group chops going. And we're always sending things, And it's good to sometimes somebody will see it late and say, like, you know, we should jump on this. And we're like, this kind of old; that's been around for a really long time. It's good to have you know, we all have different algorithms; we all see these at different times. Um, but but this kind of just like knowing, like if it is there isn't. Unfortunately, engagement metrics. But yeah i I agree with that. And I actually i have. A lot of analytics in my background, But this is an area where you kind of just you feel it dying. And and and you do you aren't looking at the likes number or the views, like you are looking at these things, all of these things together, and you are like I can kind of tell us downtrending. We should sit this one out. But yeah, it's a little bit of a combo data vibes autumn wonders. I feel like we touched on this a bit, But if you guys have anything to add to this with social, rewarding more chaotic content, how do you navigate working with brands who are weary to take risks? I am sure you've experienced this, Rachel. I mean, again, I feel like it comes back to who is your brand? Do you know your brand? Is chaos a part of your brand and participate in that? You know as much as we can talk about trends and how important it is or whatever it might be. Like no one remembers when their brands sit out at something. So, if you are not comfortable doing something, sit out. No one's gonna be like, "Why didn't they participate?" Like it's okay. What do you think about Apple getting chaotic on Maine? I think that I am like it reached their perfect audience. It was like, "What is who's the Gen Z running?" It's like they're trying to reach you with this computer. So good job for cheaper model, yeah. Is the lifespan of trends actually getting shorter? Do you guys think or are we just seeing the cycle more clear? There is just more trends, and there is trends based on your algorithm, and there is many trends within the trends. And so I think there is just more of them. I don't think it's, yeah, It can be shorter, but I've seen brands participate in a trend like a week later, but they twisted it in such a really clever way. And then you are like, oh, that was genius. And so it's not even about like getting to a trend late, It's about like can you twist it or subvert it in some way that like feels totally like inhabitation of that. So less to me about like Timing and more like, do we have a way in that's really clever or interesting. This question is actually something I intended to ask you guys earlier, but they have thrown it on here. How are you balancing your regular content calendar with trending content opportunities? How do you think about reactive versus, you know, planned? Yeah, for us, I mean it really everything is planned. Even reactive content is planned and that for us, looks like kind of how we mentioned making. We have space every month, and then we set up systems like brainstorms and Slack channels, and to constantly be preparing ourselves to react to things. You know, sometimes all a little girl or something similar will fall on your lap, but that rarely happens. Like, it does take effort to react to things and to make sure that you are seeing everything. And that you know again it's doesn't have to be just you, it can be your whole team sending info. And um yeah, yeah, I think I think that's kind of how we tend to see it. Yeah, I'd say social teams are nothing if not flexible, because you know, you always need your your planned content. But then you need to be prepared at any moment to do something totally different, whether that's you know a trend moment or something goes on in the world, and your post is no longer relevant or appropriate to push live. So. I think it's just built into the nature of a social media job. What are your thoughts on brands creating video novelas or reality shows, and that is growing in popularity to mainstream? I think they've written a lot about this. It's not; I wouldn't even call that a trend. I think that the way that the algorithm works now is that your content to some degree. You want it to like retain viewership, needs to have sort of like a through line of familiarity. And so, if you think about some of your favorite creators, Like they kind of just do one thing really well or have a format that they do over and over and over again. Yet as brands, Sometimes we are more in this sort of like we've got our pillars and our you know different formats that we're doing. And so I've seen brands have a lot of success with serializing their content in some way. I think it might be easier to do for smaller brands. I've seen like a coffee shop in Minnesota get like millions of views because it's like day one of trying something for our new fall menu, day two, day three, and you want to tune in. You'll see this comment all the time, like "my show is on." And so as a brand, I do think about like how do you get people to comment? " my show is on "? It's something that I talk to clients a lot about and like whether that's happening on the main account or launching an account to have sort of that serialized. Content is something that's very much on our minds now. Yeah, I also think that it used to be a few years ago, like you did not want to post long form content. Like people were the drop off rate. I'd say that yeah, And now and I think really what you'll see so much more of is this. And it's feeling like brands are almost like creating shows. Um, yeah, and I personally think it's really fun. I love it. I love one of my favorite examples is. the internet. It's like for me personally so enjoyable to watch. I think there's also just a lot to learn there as a social manager. Yeah, I think this still at early stages, and it's going to continue to evolve. The last two questions are pretty much the same question, I think it's important to touch on what advice would you give small social teams, even if they want to prevent burnout of trying to be constantly on? This one that actually, And if you guys don't read Rachel's Substack, link her bio is amazing. Casey's too. But for social managers specifically, I think there is so much that you've kind of laid out that social teams can use to really advocate for themselves. One of these things for me is how often you have to post. It is so much pressure to come up with an idea every single day, and I think that really used to be the expectation. I think people are becoming. away from that, it's like you kind of mentioned, like people aren't saying, like, "Oh my god, I haven't posted today. " Um. And and that's a great thing for me to think about is really like post when you have something to say that you actually feel like is worthy of being on somebody's feed. Um I think that is great because it allows you to put your time and your creative energy really into posts that really matter instead of just like. Okay, I need another one. I need another one. I need another one, which can very much lead to burnout. And as I've certainly felt that before, I would just say that there's sort of a misconception that brands are about and I find that brands that are constantly like needing to keep an eye on trends. And what should we participate in today? And like that, sort of mentality is actually more exhausting than thinking. Like hey, we have this coffee shop or we have this design studio. What could we make that is trend - agnostic. We put it out once a week, and it sort of becomes how we show up on social media. And so, I would challenge any brand that's like feeling stressed about finding their cultural moments or participating in trends, and just saying, "What show could we make?" You know, I think just even just a brainstorm that. Explored that is worth it because I personally found myself exhausted, trying to keep up with every trend. Thank you, guys, so much. Being here. Thank you all for coming.