FRANK: Winning over the world with Weetabix

Transcript

CAT ANDERSON Welcome to Social Creatures, a podcast from Sprout Social. I’m Cat, and I’m here to explore some of my favourite success stories from the world of social media. This is a space for everyone. And, really, nearly anything goes. But what makes an account successful or popular? Honestly, it’s hard to know. But that’s what we’re here to find out.

Throughout the series, we’ll talk with the brands behind the accounts you know and some that you don’t to explore the weird and wonderful ways that businesses, organisations, and individuals have achieved success on social media, all with tangible insights that you can apply to your own social strategies. And we’ll be heeding the advice of Stacey, our social media agony aunt, who’s here to guide you through some of your trickiest digital dilemmas.

So, this week, I am joined by Graham Goodkind, the founder of the multi-award winning agency, Frank. One thing that I personally really love about social media is its capacity to surprise and delight. And, oftentimes, this is with moments of absolute madness. 

A perfect example of such an occasion was when the Internet, as a whole, became obsessed and also maybe a bit horrified when Weetabix and Heinz baked beans did a campaign together. If you missed it, it was when Weetabix oh-so casually suggested the unusual pairing of serving their biscuits with a tasty and savoury topping of Heinz baked beans.

Now, to say this caused a bit of a ruckus is an understatement. It caused an absolute massive brand pile-on to begin with. So, we had the likes of the NHS. We had Toblerone. People around the world debated whether this food pairing was heaven or hell. And let’s not forget the press also went absolutely bananas for it as well.

If I’m being totally honest, I don’t know if I would have been able to look at that campaign at the start and have predicted the absolutely enormous reaction it had. So, that is why I cannot wait to talk to Graham, today, as the founder of the agency behind this gloriously mad and perfectly genius company.

If you want to see what else this incredible agency has done, you can follow them @WelcomeToFrank.

Graham, welcome to Social Creatures.

GRAHAM GOODKIND Thanks very much for having me.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, I’m – I’m delighted. And I’m absolutely going to burn your ear off with questions. So, apologies in advance.

GRAHAM GOODKIND Okay. Well, hopefully, I can do them justice. I’ll try my best.

CAT ANDERSON Well, before we just get really into the nitty-gritty of this particular campaign and your feelings about social …

GRAHAM GOODKIND Mmhmm.

CAT ANDERSON … can you tell us a little bit about Frank in general and what it is that your agency does?

GRAHAM GOODKIND Frank is a all-around consumer agency, specialising, really, with consumer brands, products, services. So, lots of food, drink, hospitality, alcohol. All those sorts of clients. Just kind of anything and everything. A bit of consumer technology, some financial services targeting any brands that need to target a consumer audience. We’ve been going for twenty-one years. So, we’re really old boys and girls in this industry and constantly trying to come up with ideas to keep us and our brands relevant in today’s world. 

And that is all underpinned by a keyword, and a keyword that I’m probably going to say too much today, which is Talkability. And our whole creative process, our ethos, the way the agency was set up twenty-odd years ago and still runs the day is to come up with those ideas, campaigns, moments, stunts, events that are those, if you like, watercooler moments, the stuff that you’re going to share with your mate’s be it via WhatsApp, on social media, or down the pub.

How do we come up with those ideas that become those talking points that you’re going to talk about? And, obviously, you know, what we’re going to talk about today with Weetabix and beans certainly was one of those.

CAT ANDERSON That’s the perfect word. I wasn’t sure what word you’re going to say. But Talkability. This campaign. Like, holy smokes. It was spoken about by everybody. If there is someone who hasn’t seen this campaign, it was massively, almost innocently simple with how straightforward it was. It was a – a plate with Heinz baked beans on top of two Weetabix rusks, with the caption, “Why should bread have all the fun when there’s Weetabix serving up @HeinzUK Beanz on Bix for breakfast with a twist?” And it went absolutely everywhere.

I would love to know. How did you come up with that?

GRAHAM GOODKIND Okay. It was surprisingly simple. And I would have to say, as someone that loves great creative thinking in this business, the best ideas are very often the most simple ideas. But the – the sort of root to it, really, and – and why we came up with it and the whole backstory is important, because it’s very relevant. 

Weetabix as a brand, so, we’ve been working with them for a number of years now. And one of the things that’s very important for them is their strapline, which is Any-Which-Way-A-Bix, which is the fact that you can enjoy your Weetabix kind of however you want to. There’s no rules about it. Sure, the traditional perception, you might have it with a bit of milk and a bit of sugar or a bit of honey or whatever in the morning. But, you know, there aren’t any rules really attached to it. And that’s what Weetabix wanted to build on and established. And they spent a lot of money above the line in their advertising and other form of communication expressing that.

So, the ongoing brief to us, and it’s a part of an ongoing campaign, this – this piece of work was: How can we amplify that? How can we make that relevant? So, we wanted to do that in a – in a talkable way. 

And we looked at—. One of the things we looked at and we started getting interested about was these unusual food combinations. This came as a result through a lot of different social listening as well, whereby we were getting consumers emailing or actually commonly getting in touch via Twitter or other social media channels with their Weetabix recipes and how they enjoy their Weetabix. And it just got us thinking that maybe there’s other ways of doing it.

So, Weetabix and beans actually came as part of a number of different food combinations that we put together. And what we’d done is we’d done them officially. So, our idea was, “Look, we’re going to go to a few different brands.” Heinz Beans was one of them. But we’re going to go to a few different brands and efficiently pair up with them.

So, we have a number of other brands that we’d engage with and we’d had their official social media accounts endorse that combination. And we did some shots.

The – the trick was that made this a phenomenon, and you used the word and it’s kind of a good word, was the pile-on that happened. And the scale, really, as well as being Weetabix and beans was definitely our icing on the cake, if you like, of the different food combinations. The way we released it was quite deliberately engineered. And that was – that was the whole kind of media strategy. The media plan is we thought, okay, instead of just releasing Weetabix and Innocent, Weetabix and Marmite, Weetabix and a peanut butter brand, instead of just staggering them a bit, we did it all on one day and in one go, because we want to create that feeling that one brand was piling onto another, was piling onto another.

So, where it got us was that pile-on becoming viral beyond viral in terms of the amount of other brands that decided to get involved in the debate. So, on the one hand, there was the brand strategy about how do you show the versatility of Weetabix? The fact that consumers can enjoy it any way which they want, which was really important from a brand point of view. And then, there was the executional strategy, was we got one, you know, fun, silly, random idea in terms of Weetabix and beans. How do we then amplify that? And our plan was by actually engaging other brands to make it seem like you were jumping on the bandwagon, and one was leading to another one, and, hopefully, it would lead to more and more, which is obviously what transpired. And it did.

And you have to remember the timing of this. This was all when we’d gone into another lockdown. So, that mood of the nation was a bit “Oh, my God. Here we go again.” A bit miserable, a bit down. We – we – we needed a bit of light, relief, and a bit of a respite from the kind of COVID-induced boredom that we were all in. And, you know, we sort of picked our moment in time obviously absolutely perfectly.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, amen. Oh, my goodness. I have about a million questions off the back of that. But I’ll just start with maybe the most simple one. When this did start to blow up, and it certainly did do that, could you have anticipated how big it would have got? Obviously, as you said, there was a strategy there to have the four different examples with other brands. And I love that you’re like, “Right. We’ll – we’ll deploy them all on the same day, so we have that big impact.” But it really went bananas.

GRAHAM GOODKIND And it’s hard to envisage that that’s going to happen. I can’t say, “Yeah, yeah. We knew it was going to get” …

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … “you know, five hundred other brands piling on within the space of a few hours. Yeah, yeah. We knew it was going to get picked up by just about every national media and newspaper.” You know? And – and that, you know—. Of course, we didn’t know that.

But—. And as the same and a lot of the time in – in PR when you, you know, release great stories on behalf of clients, you know, sometimes, it – it just goes better than your wildest ever dreams. And this was an example of that.

CAT ANDERSON We’ve said a couple of times now about the pile-on. And a phrase that I learnt quite recently that I both love and hate is “branter.” And it sounds like it’s something that you were aware of before. You know? You’re like, “Right. Well, we’ll pair up with these other brands and try and – try and inspire that brand pile-on to happen.”

I’d love to hear, like, what your thoughts are as an agency. What are your thoughts about branter? ‘Cause it’s getting massive these days as well, isn’t it? Everybody wants a bit of branter.

GRAHAM GOODKIND Absolutely. Now, Frank, you know, for a number of [plants], we’re looking after their – the social media side of their communications. And it’s kind of you thinking of if – if a brand was a famous person or a celebrity and they were tweeting and/or posting on social media, what would they say? And that requires quite skilled members of the team to assume the personality of that brand.

And Weetabix, it’s a family brand and, you know, it’s kind of been about for – for over a hundred years. So, there’s—. There’s—. They just got to get the tone right. But it is a big thing. We do it now for a number of clients. And, you know, people just have to put themselves in their headspaces. It’s – it’s almost like you’re personalising a brand and bringing it to life as a person.

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

GRAHAM GOODKIND And it is—. You’re right. It is a new word. I’m not sure whether the descriptive verb for “brand banter” happened before or after Weetabix. But maybe, like, Talkability, maybe I’ll claim that one as well.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. [crosstalk].

GRAHAM GOODKIND You’ve just given me a good idea. I’m going to go off and register the trademark now.

CAT ANDERSON Well, if you register to trademark, that, I – I want in on it.

GRAHAM GOODKIND We’ll share it.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. I want in on it. Thanks. But yeah. I – I think you’re so right, by the way. I was nodding furiously when you said that it takes a lot of skill, because I think another aspect about the branter thing is that you’re definitely being a bit cheeky. And if you’re being a bit cheeky and also representing the brand, there is a bit of a fine line there.

You mentioned there that Weetabix is a family – a family brand as well as a family business. So, in a way, because this campaign was so divisive, it just blew people’s minds. But it also—. Everyone could have an opinion of it. And you know, it was absolutely risk-free in a way, you know. Like, I know—. I – I have it down here that Israel’s official account said, “Finally, something that all Middle Eastern countries can agree on. Just no.” Which is, you know—. That’s hilarious that accounts like that are even weighing in on it, you know.

GRAHAM GOODKIND I mean, that – that, to me, was the – the thing that amused me most and made the campaign work. You’re right. The state of Israel, the official state of Israel. It was towards the end of the day. And I thought, “Look, job done.” 

Sometimes, in – in this PR career, over – over the number of years, you know, you – you’re promoting brands. You’re not doing anything that’s really going to change the world. You’re just having a bit of fun and trying to flog more of your client’s stuff. But, you know, to actually go some way to solving the Middle Eastern peace. You know, the – the – the situation in the Middle East that has never had a solution in all these years, and one – one funny tweet from Weetabix can – can do that. But that’s right. They said that, “Finally, something that every Middle Eastern country can agree on. Just no.”

And then, they did offer the advice. “Want to know how you can upgrade your Weetabix?” Their suggestion was hummus.

You know, Scotland also said, “Speaking as the country who gave the world such culinary delights as haggis and deep-fried confectionary, we can confirm this is, in fact, a step too far.” That was Scotland speaking.

Toblerone said just on the national continuum, the national theme, Toblerone said, “We’re from Switzerland. So, we’re staying out of this.”

Shakespeare’s Globe got a bit more punny about it. They go, “To bean or not to bean. That is the question.”

Again, all posting, you know, the actual original Weetabix and beans tweet.

The NHS, obviously, this is at the time of COVID as well like we’ve discussed. During the lockdown, actually took the time to tweet this, “That tweet should come with a health warning.”

Greater Manchester Police. I like this one as well. Again, speaking, you know, using their brands. I thought this was quite good. The Greater Manchester police said, “We’ve bean”—oh, okay; the pun—”looking into this after a number of complaints today, due to its serious nature, we’ve passed this over to our major incident team who deal with cereal killers.”

See what they—.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, no.

GRAHAM GOODKIND See what they’d done. 

Then, Wimbledon, the official account of Wimbledon, the lawn tennis association. “Quiet, please.”

Skyscanner said, “This is worse than the people who clap when the plane lands.”

Google – Google said, “Look at what – at what you’ve done now.” And they had a photo of a Google search with Weetabix and beans coming up top of the predictive search results because of that story.

Guinness World Records gave us the record for the most random breakfast combination ever. 

And Pfizer, again, at the time of, you know, COVID said, “Haven’t our scientists worked hard enough without having to come up with an antidote to this?”

So, it was kind of far and wide brands just, you know, just getting in on it. I mean, obviously, either – either they loved it and no one had a lot else to do that day. But it certainly kicked off, you know, a phenomenon. I mean, certainly from an evaluation point of view for us, it was – it was literally billions of – of – of shares …

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … around the world. 

So, we had that the next day on all the broadcast media. It really hit home. And then, we had all the national newspapers in the morning and stuff like that. That got you more traditional PR coverage as a result of the fury and the pile-on …

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … that happened on social media the day before. 

And then, the next day, which was something quite unbelievable, which has never happened in, you know, all the campaigns, and we’ve run some really good campaigns over the years, is that actually an MP got up in parliament to decide to raise it in the House of Parliament as an – an issue that needed debating in the chamber, because, apparently, it was even more divisive for the country than Brexit. I mean, literally, this guy was – was bringing it. I was thinking, “What? It’s just – it’s just kind of weird talking about this in a brainstorm a couple of weeks ago. And here is, like, in a [unintelligible] and recorded in time forevermore as – as being on the agenda of the House of Parliament.

You know, I think for any PR campaign to be the subject that’s debated in – in a House of Commons is – is incredible. 

It was also, like—.That weekend as well, afterwards, it was on a quiz question on – on whatever the Ant and Dec quiz show was. And I’ve seen it on …

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … several other quiz shows. You know, has been asked in which – which breakfast cereal was combined with beans to do [unintelligible]. It’s like a really quiz question on …

CAT ANDERSON Yeah.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … on all these game shows now. It’d probably be on University Challenge in a few years’ time. Who knows?

CAT ANDERSON I mean, if it’s on University Challenge, you’ve definitely done well. But I think it’s—.

GRAHAM GOODKIND Leave it a couple of years, ’cause it will be, like …

CAT ANDERSON But—.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … history or something like that [crosstalk].

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. Like, “Ooh.” Yeah. But, I mean, if it’s a quiz question, you know, it has very much permeated into pop culture now.

GRAHAM GOODKIND Yeah.

CAT ANDERSON A pop culture legend.

Now, here at Sprout Social, we know that social media is a wild and wonderful beast. It can surprise and delight, but it can also confuse and perplex even the hardiest of social media users. Who better to turn to for help than our social media expert, Stacey Wright, who’s here to answer your questions over a cup of tea and some biscuits in the part of the show we like to call Sound Advice.

STACEY WRIGHT Right. I’ve got my cup of tea and I’ve got my letters, which can only mean it’s time for us to take a break and cosy down together. This is the part of the podcast where I, your social media agony aunt, Stacey, guide you, our dear listeners, through your trickiest digital dilemmas.

Right. Let me see what social media conundrums you’ve sent my way to.

“Dear Stacey,

“I’m going to cut right to it. What the hell do I do with TikTok? It seems like all the bigwigs in our organisation got together on an away day, maybe tried out a few dance routines and filters, and now I’m being asked for our TikTok strategy for 2022. But it feels like the ask has come out of nowhere.

“Our call channels are currently YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. As a charitable non-profit, our content also tends to be more serious and informative, geared up to drive awareness. Plus, usually has a lot of compliance and governance reviews in advance of publishing.

“Where would we start? We’ve seen charities have great success on there. So, I’m keen to explore TikTok as a new platform for us, but feeling the pressure of where to begin.

“Hoping you can help me silence the PR alarm bells in my head, Ana.”

Ana, I hear this every single day from our customers. And it does sometimes feel that our bosses are asking us to jump on these social media bandwagons, right? TikTok is huge. And now they want to be part of that bus.

So, important questions to ask yourself and of your stakeholders is: Where is this coming from, and why now? Did they really cook up this idea on an away day? And also to yourself: Where are you in your social media strategy in terms of that journey right now? Do you have the resources to bring in an external, maybe creative agency to help you with this? Do you have the time to be exploring a new platform?

And when considering this, think about what you can test in terms of content in the platforms you’re already using. So, if it’s YouTube, can you test out content in YouTube Shorts? If it’s Facebook, can you use the Stories function? In Instagram, can you see Reels, because, you know, we often see TikTok videos reshared in all of those environments?

And then, if you’re more B2B, and it’s LinkedIn, you could ask yourself: How much video am I creating on LinkedIn? Is this a channel that we should be considering full stop? Because video production is so timely and costly in terms of resource.

So, all of these questions give you a foundation of how much work it’s going to be to create a new content strategy for a new platform. And—. But also you can start to test things on what works and what doesn’t.

But bringing it back to TikTok specifically, the key thing here is around personality. What personality would your brand/organisation have on TikTok? And by this, I mean, who does your brand want to be? Can you give them a presence in terms of thinking about a celebrity and then imagining what content you would like to follow from them and use that as the guide for your posts? Then, ask yourself: What content is appropriate for us?

Some brands will be more adventurous. Some won’t. Let’s say that TikTok tends to err towards the more adventurous of brands.

Ana, thanks so much for emailing your social media conundrum. Hopefully, you’ll turn those bigwigs into TikTok superstars in no time.

Until next time, listeners. Stay strong and stay social. And now back to the interview.

CAT ANDERSON I wonder, with Frank using Talkability as your unique selling point, and that’s what you’re going to try and drive, how would you pick, without giving away too much of your patented secrets, what’s the recipe of Talkability and what role does social have in – in that recipe?

GRAHAM GOODKIND I mean, it – it’s a good question. And there is a recipe. I’ve kind of given away the – the secret sauce several times. But we have a sort of creative process that we use at Frank. We look at the conventions and we look at the culturally embedded biases and conventions, which shape the standard approaches to doing things in that brand space. And then, we look at how we can disrupt those conventions to forge something radically new or different.

So, you know, I guess applying conventions, they’re very simply the Weetabix and food combinations other than milk, sugar, you know, perhaps butter or cheese were normal conventions in their space of the brand. You know, we—. It’s a completely new convention, a completely new way of – of doing it.

So, that’s—. Looking at conventions is one part of the Talkability process. Another part is looking at perceptions. And we look – try and ask ourselves questions. What happens when we look at the brand or the category that the brand operates in through another lens? So, that’s method two.

Method three is visualisation. And a brand’s imagery is very important. And thinking about what one could do from that perspective can be very productive. I mean, actually, if you look at the Weetabix and baked beans simply short image, it went global in ten minutes. And also if you know, we didn’t even use any Heinz branding in that, by the way. It was just sort of baked beans.

And the last thing to look at when you’re looking at how to come up with ideas with Talkability is look at the zeitgeists. And that’s getting to grips with the spirit and mood of the times. And that’s core, I think, to having an idea with viral potential.

I think you’ve got to look as well of a bit of what sort of ideas are shareable? You’ve got to look at the elements and ingredients of stories that we’re actually going to share or talk about and why we’re going to do it. And, normally, they have a lot of different things. You know? Sometimes, they have a bit of controversy. So, I guess this was a controversial food choice. Sometimes, they have a bit of celebrity attached to it. It might – it might be something that makes a story make-able. In this case, there wasn’t really any celebrity endorsement. But celebrity brands, if you like, were endorsing …

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … about it as a bit of a “man bites dog” as opposed to “dog bites man” element to it. So, something a bit unexpected. Something with a bit of humour tends to be something we share. Something, too, with a bit of purpose, tends to be something we share. Or charity. So, it needs to have at least one of those ingredients for you to – to kind of want to share it.

And if you, you know, just simply put—. If you go through a newspaper today and you look up, you know, other than situations like Ukraine where you’ve got hard news stories about some bad stuff going on, but if you look at the consumer stories, you’ll normally see one or more of those elements of, I used to call them, make-ability that actually mean that they get on the media agenda. And, therefore, you know, if they’ve got the other bits that you talked about from a – I talked about from a Talkability point of view, put those two together, and there you have our process. And that’s kind of the process, really, in a nutshell, of how we do things.

CAT ANDERSON Graham, I’m really glad that you shared your secret formula with us. And honoured. And I’m sure all of our listeners will be as well. Because I do think, so often, even on this podcast, when we have discussions about moments that have gone, you know, incredibly massive, a lot of it – a lot of the times, they are quite simple, light, funny little moments, you know. It’s not overly complex.

But I also did wonder, with this particular campaign, if the UK doesn’t have a particular type of appetite, no pun intended, for the more surreal marketing. Everybody always talks about, you know, when Cadbury’s had the gorilla doing the drums back in the day.

GRAHAM GOODKIND Yeah.

CAT ANDERSON And you’ve got like the meerkats with Compare the Market and stuff that is a bit strange. Is that something that you as an agency intentionally tap into or is it innate, because you are British? Or what do you think about that?

GRAHAM GOODKIND I mean, I think it’s a very good question. I think, actually, just – just FYI, we also were behind the – the meerkat campaign with Alexander Orlov and brought him to life. And I think became the first ever …

CAT ANDERSON Oh, no way.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … non-human to be interviewed by The Sun. 

CAT ANDERSON I didn’t know that.

GRAHAM GOODKIND Yeah. So, we kind of did that campaign back in the day as well. So, funny you mentioned that.

But I think you’re spot on. I mean, as an agency, and Frank, I’ve set up offices in America, we set up an office in New York, and in Australia. And the thing I noticed is that the sense of humour and the tongue-in-cheek bit that you refer to in terms of that uniquely British humour, it didn’t really translate at all.

When I took it to other countries, in America, it went down like a [unintelligible]. There was no irony there. And a lot of these campaigns are very ironic. You know, the Weetabix and beans campaign is, you know, very ironic in terms of its taste. And, you know, so was the other campaigns that you’ve mentioned.

In Australia, I think, I learnt that definitely, there, it’s closer. And I think the closest fit culturally in terms of the British way of thinking is over there. But I think, you know, for other countries, it’s not even close. And you go to Europe, and they just look at you with a bit of a bemused look that this is happening.

And I think you’re right. There is something unique about this country. I think it’s kind of the reason why I’ve – I’ve – I’ve sort of settled in – in – in my old age, I guess, to thinking that, “You know what? I love doing this sort of work. And I think it’s only going to really work in the UK.” And I think, as you said, it’s very relevant.

And it’s difficult to explain what that is. You sort of either get it or you don’t get it. And you know … 

CAT ANDERSON Yeah.

GRAHAM GOODKIND … things that are – are right or – or not right. If you actually had to intellectualise it, it’d be quite hard. You just know it or you don’t.

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

GRAHAM GOODKIND And you know when you get it wrong by the fact that it doesn’t get much pickup. And you know when you get it right, and you get a success like Weetabix and beans.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. It’s funny you mentioned that sort of intangibility. ‘Cause, again, that is something that’s come up in other conversations with people where there is – there’s lots of things you can do to sort of predict the success of something. And this, obviously, was a huge success for you. But what are the success metrics that actually matter to Frank?

GRAHAM GOODKIND It was quite interesting you say that is that I don’t think there are any, to be honest. I think the big problem has existed in PR forever and social, you know, more recently is “What are valid metrics and what are good ways of evaluation?” I guess, with this Weetabix and beans campaign, the best evaluation is the bottom line. It’s not always possible. And with – with other campaigns and – and a lot of campaigns aren’t directly linked to the bottom line, we saw week on week a fifteen percent uplift in Weetabix sales by Sainsbury’s. So, you know, we can pretty much assume that was a uniform thing. But that’s what they reported. You know, that their sales were up fifteen percent, you know, in a time when there wasn’t really any activity going on apart from the social media stuff. 

You could see a massive effect in terms of sales with this. But this was, obviously, a, you know, like you sort of say, I wouldn’t say necessarily once in a lifetime. I would say—. I would say—. I always like to say that this is the second-best campaign I’ve ever done.

CAT ANDERSON Well, I mean, you know what I have to ask now. What was the first best campaign that you—?

GRAHAM GOODKIND The best is yet to come.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, I love that. Oh, wow. I really – I really fell for that, didn’t I? 

GRAHAM GOODKIND Yeah, you did. You did [crosstalk]. So, that was really good.

CAT ANDERSON I do wonder, and, obviously, in an ideal world, everyone would be coming to Frank to get all of this insight and professionalism and amazing campaigns on success ultimately. But there maybe are some brands out there who are going to be starting out. They don’t have the budget yet. Do you have any advice for people who maybe want to elevate their digital output, but maybe still have to go out alone for a little while?

GRAHAM GOODKIND Well, you know, I mean, test and learn, test and learn. I mean, for each brand, it’s going to be different. See where you’re getting a bit of traction or a good response, or, you know, a sort of tone of voice or a way of doing it or a creative idea that’s resonating. And then, keep on developing on that. Keep on honing that, I think, is probably a good way.

As I said, at the start, if Talkability and/or viral-ness is your – is your objective—I mean, it all depends on what your objective is, really—then, think about some of the things that I talked about from the four different levers, if you like, you can play with in terms of what are the roots of an idea that’s going to have Talkability. Have a think about that. You know? 

Is your subject matter that you’re communicating on social media, is it something you want to talk about because it’s obviously interesting to you? Think about is that interest really interesting to anyone else?

It’s always the kind of problem that you get with clients a lot of the time, is – is something that is so immensely interesting to them, actually, you as the in-between person, between them and the consumer, you actually think, “Well, really, it’s not. I know I get why you’re interested in it, because you would be, wouldn’t it? It’s your job. But it’s not gonna be interesting to anyone else.”

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

GRAHAM GOODKIND So, think about that general stuff. Are you passionate about something you’re interested [unintelligible]? Is anyone else going to be? And if not, what you need to do to that to make it interesting to get shared.

CAT ANDERSON Brilliant. Thank you. Our final question is a question that we’re asking everybody on the podcast, and you can answer on behalf of Frank the agency or yourself, Graham Goodkind. If you had to delete everyone that you follow on Twitter and just have one account left, who would be your one follow?

GRAHAM GOODKIND Well, since I’m the – I’m the owner of Frank, so it’s the kind of one and the same kind of entity, I would make this a personal choice, and it would be the official Arsenal Football Club account. Being a mad gooner and Arsenal fan, that would have to be the one that I’d keep.

CAT ANDERSON That is absolutely loyalty. I love it.

GRAHAM GOODKIND Absolutely.

CAT ANDERSON Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. It’s been absolutely brilliant. Thank you, Graham.

GRAHAM GOODKIND No. You’re welcome. It was good fun. Thanks for having me.

CAT ANDERSON You’ve been listening to Social Creatures with me, Cat Anderson. Many thanks to Graham Goodkind of Frank for joining me today and to Sprout Social for making this podcast possible.

Make sure you join me for the rest of the series by subscribing on your favourite podcast platform, where you can tune into a new episode every two weeks.

You can continue the conversation around today’s episode by getting in touch on our social media @SproutSocial or by sending your social media quandaries to our agony aunt, Stacey, by emailing soundadvice@sproutsocial.com.

Thanks for listening and catch you in two weeks.