Steal the Influencer Marketing Blueprint from the ‘Gen Z Whisperer’ Behind Two Viral Food Brands

0:00Jasmine:Hey business besties, welcome back to Female Founder World. I'm Jasmine, I'm the host of this show and today I'm chatting with Cameron Frederickson. She's the head of brand at Sauce. Welcome. Thank you, thank you for having me. For people that don't know Sauce, what are you guys doing? We are a pasta sauce brand in the simplest terms, but I mean like besides our clean ingredients, what really differentiates us from other brands is our fun and unique flavors. So yeah, we're kind of stepping away from like what's been done before in the category. And when did you join? I joined about two years ago and they were about like two months into launch.

0:30Jasmine:Okay. And before that you were at Doe, another food brand. Yes. And you joined them just before they launched. Yes. So first employee at two like pretty, for people who are in this space, like they're very cool, well-known kind of food brands. And you were the first employee at both. Yes. I'm sorry, I really wanted to talk to you. One of, a founder in our community, Paige, who also like helps on the team sometimes, she recommended we speak to you. because she was like, she's doing really interesting things. She should come on the podcast. And so we wanted to get just your perspective as someone who's been building these brands from the ground up and doing a really good job at it.

1:04Jasmine:What's working, what's not working and what people can think about doing from a brand marketing perspective in their own consumer facing brands. Yeah. Give me a little bit more background around you and how you got into this kind of work. And then we're going to get into the good stuff. Yeah. Well, I was not planning on getting into this at all. I got my first opportunity with Doe while I was still in college and I was studying psychology and like planning to be a therapist. And I kind of had a like, I don't know, quarter life crisis of like, I don't think I actually want to do that. I think I want to do something a little more creative.

1:37I grew up in a really creative household. So I started working for a furniture company thinking I was pursuing interior design. And that's where I met my first boss who was the founder of Doe and she brought me on just like as a Gen Z like younger perspective to bring to the brand to help them with social media and everything creative and then my role just kind of like developed from there none of it was really planned but I just like started doing social media and it turned into a million other things that I helped the brand with and I was their first employee and then how did you join Source I was actually I was poached by the founders

2:17Jasmine:um so all care no responsibility if you get poached after being on this they won't want to hear that but I met the founders of Saws at a big trade show that happens every year called Expo West and they were like pre-launched when we first talked and they asked to pick my brain and like asked me to a coffee and when I was sitting there they just offered me a job on the spot I originally turned them down which is something we joke about all the time now. And I just felt like I wasn't ready. And I was super devoted to dough because it was my first job. I was the first hire. I felt like I had just contributed so much to them and felt really tied to it.

2:59I was so invested to it. And I a few months later, I actually ran into one of the founders of Saws at an Erewhon sampling the sauce and he still had the job and it just kind of felt like fate and I pretty much took the job on the spot. Amazing. Okay.

3:15Jasmine:So I want to, the few things we're going to dive into in this episode is kind of the stuff that you're doing in these businesses that have helped them create these really resonant and just strong brands. And I want to know the practical stuff, but let's start with kind of as head of brand, what does that mean? What are you looking at? What are you working on? I think as the first hire at any startup, your role is not just one thing. It's so many things and you have to wear so many different hats. I came on and at both companies really took over everything from social strategy to content creation to influencer and brand partnerships.

3:53I even was doing some graphic design in terms of like merch, but then also like digital marketing and emails and SMS. So I really kind of oversee everything that's just like creative and like consumer facing. Let's start with social and content. When we look at this

4:09Jasmine:this space of creating content, building social media strategies, feels like things are changing and there are always new platforms and like trends are moving really fast. I want to know what kind of stuff you're doing or maybe something that's like been working quite well at one of the brands that you've been involved with. I think like storytelling is a really important aspect of like content creation and social media. I think it is one thing to follow a trend and maybe have like one viral moment every once in a while. It's kind of like a one hit wonder. But if you're really committed to telling a story that can really capture people and they want to follow along, like it's more willing to like propel your brand.

4:54So something like that we focus on a lot at Saws is how we're a really young company. And we love to tell the story of how when it was started, it was two 23-year-old founders. I was the oldest on the team at 24. And we really had no idea what we were doing. And I think just being super candid about that and real about the fact that we were just figuring it out was really entertaining to people and people wanted to follow along. And so I think like upholding these stories and like developing them like as things progress in real time is a really like amazing way to like capture people's attention and get them really invested in the brand.

5:34From a practical perspective what kinds of specific posts are you creating

5:39Jasmine:to tell that story? I think there's so many different ways that you can tell stories I think you know video format seems like the most natural way sometimes like on TikToks and Reels but then also you can you know utilize carousels now like even TikTok has the option to be doing like photo carousels where you can literally just put photos and type text over it as like what you're doing. It's a really simple and not time consuming way. It's like tell a story. I think videos are the most engaging, I would say, but there's really so many different ways that you can utilize the different tools and the apps.

6:13Are you guys like creating everything in app? Would you use all the tools as well? I think typically I do create within TikTok. Usually it's TikTok and then we'll post it on Instagram sometimes I'll do it in CapCut which I think is related to TikTok and sometimes it's a little easier there to just like cut things up and do a little more they offer like a few more tools I feel like than TikTok does sometimes but I do also feel like when you're creating things within the TikTok app itself it tends to help push it out into the algorithm a little bit I feel like both

6:45Jasmine:brands that you've worked with just create have created really great content and I'm wondering if you like where you go or like what your process is for organizing content and like coming up with ideas just stuff that there's other accounts that you follow to like learn to be on top of trends like what where are you going to like source this inspiration for content I mean honestly just like being in the feed and like sometimes I it's funny I joke it's like research I'm like just scrolling through the app. Sometimes I'll take 30 minutes to scroll through, see what sounds are trending, see what trends are trending, and then kind of use that as a foundation for the storytelling that we do.

7:26Jasmine:Okay. I want to talk about influencers now. So what are you doing at both? What did you do at both brands in terms of like influencer marketing? And then we can talk about like what's working, what's not working. I think influencer marketing is a twofold thing. There's seeding and then there's like paid partnerships. One is way more costly than the other. I think they're both equally as effective. I would say like we have leaned a lot more into seeding at both companies because it is so much more cost efficient. It's really cheap to do. Like it's just the cost of product and it's a really easy way to start like building relationships with influencers that don't feel like transactional either.

8:07I think it's really easy to approach an influencer and be like, hey, let's have a paid partnership. And then it's really like it just goes from there. But when you're actually taking the time to hear their feedback, send them things that they actually want to try and like give them the freedom to do it like on their own time in their own way, like you build this relationship with this person as like more than just an influencer and it really like I think incentivizes them to want to continue like supporting the brand like when they feel like they have a connection to the brand or like someone on the

8:40Jasmine:brand when you're launching or in the early months or years how many influencers are you seeding and like what's the process to reach out because like when you're only a few months old now maybe you can reach out and influencers like oh yeah I love that product I know that brand I totally want that but it's pretty it's different when no one knows who you are yeah really like we just utilize the DMs. I think it's the most personal way to reach out to someone. Emails tend to get lost and they feel very like business formal. And when you're talking to someone in DMs, it can turn very conversational and turn into kind of a connection and relationship, like I was saying.

9:15And in terms of getting them to actually want to try the product, I think it's really just about the approach. And I've always kind of approached it from a more personal stance of like, hey, I am this person. Like I'm Cameron. I work for Saws. We are a brand new pasta sauce company that's just hitting the shelves. We just launched in Erewhon, for example. And they like really want to be a part of that. When you introduce yourself as this like new player in the game, it turns into something they kind of want to be a part of. And I think just like putting a person behind it versus just like making it sound like an automated message that you just like copied and pasted to a million people is super key.

9:57I like also add a bunch of like exclamation points and stuff and emojis and everything to really make it seem like I'm having a conversation with a friend. Yeah. Not adding an M dash.

10:08Jasmine:Let's talk about like the number of people you're reaching out to or like gifting. What do you recommend? When you're starting really just as many as your fingers can type to. How expensive your product is. But like with CQT, like with your food brand the cost of getting something to someone is low compared to if you're super expensive exactly yeah right now I'd say we're trying to do like one to two hundred a month it fluctuates for sure when we have product launches we can go anywhere up to like five hundred a month but I think when it comes to just like evergreen consistent seating we like to hit that like one to two hundred spot and I think it doesn't always have to be a hundred to two hundred new people like it can be people that you sent to three months ago and like checking in how they're doing, how they like the product.

10:52Do they want to try something else? Do they want to try our new product? And like, again, really building that relationship with them.

10:59Jasmine:And are you tracking anything after the gifting? Like, are you watching to see if they post? Like, are you giving them any like affiliate links or discount codes? Yeah. So that was something that was kind of a pain point in the beginning. We felt like it was super manual and really hard to track. Affiliate is hard because we are a mostly retail brand versus D2C. And so it is really hard to track if people are actually going out and buying the product. Because they literally could just be going to Erebon. Yeah, exactly. And we're now available like pretty much within 10 miles of almost anyone. We are in Target, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Kroger, Albertsons.

11:39Amazing. That is so many places. Yeah. And then even just like tracking if people were actually posting was hard as well because we were ceding to so many people and we are such a small team but we started utilizing a platform called archive which has been really helpful where essentially you can make these lists in the in the website and they kind of auto populate if the person posted or not you can go in and see these metrics of how many people posted you can even they estimate the story viewership of like how many people might have seen the story that they posted and so it really like unlocks so many metrics that you can't do manually

12:16Jasmine:that is such a good recommendation I've never heard of this before so it's obviously like connected with Instagram and TikTok and it's yeah literally it's called archive.com and it also creates an archive of everyone that's posted or mentioned the brand even I feel like the only way to access that before was looking in your in your own story archive but if you didn't happen to repost the story or see it then like you were never gonna have that in your own archive i wish i had this before our event this weekend and i could have put everyone in there and then yeah everyone who mentioned it yeah it's um is it expensive i think there's a free there is a free version of it in the beginning but it caps you at how many posts you can see so we have invested money into it to be able to just have unlimited i am like writing this down to download yeah tonight that is such a good rack yeah and what about the paid partnerships that you're that you're doing how many are you doing what's your what are your lessons in the beginning we were kind of just in a testing phase of if we saw someone that we really liked and thought would perform well we weren't really capping it at anything we were kind of just experimenting and being like all right let's try this type of person let's do this many this month let's like do this budget like it really phased every month but now we're trying to be a little more intentional like going into this next year of the partnerships we're doing in terms of the people we're partnering with and like the budget we're spending towards it um so I think like going forward I think we're going to be doing just like maybe two to three a month um whereas before I feel like it ranged anywhere from like one to seven like it was a huge range and we were just kind of in the testing phase how do you decide who to work with is it based on those like seeding gifting partnerships and seeing who performs or is it more about like people maybe you wouldn't be able to have access to through a seeding program?

14:07Yeah I feel like when I was at Doe it was we were primarily a D2C business and so it was really easy to see who was performing and we kind of used that strategy of choosing who to partner with based on like how they were performing just with organic posting. With Saws like I mentioned it's a little harder because we're a retail business. So we really just try to, A, like pick people that we're familiar with and we ourselves enjoy following and feel like they have influenced us in some way before. But then also getting a little more granular and seeing like their demographic and is this supporting the campaigns we're running?

14:46Is this supporting like the retailers that we're trying to push right now? So for example, like Target is a completely demographic, completely different demographic than like a sprout shopper for example and so when we're trying to push those retailers and promote them we really like look into who these people's or who these creators audiences are and kind of go from there to educate our yeses and you might say to them like

15:13Jasmine:push to target or push to sprout or push to ddc depending on yeah i think in the most subtle way possible we also try not to be super salesy like when we're partnering with people because it just doesn't perform as well I really like to give these creators like full creative freedom and kind of let them do what they think is going to work with their content and their audience so if anything I'm like all right just pull it out of a sprouts bag for example and don't say anything about sprouts just like pull it out so there's subliminal messaging but it's not super sales forward smart yeah I want to know what else goes into a brief when you're talking with these influencers like what are you asking them to do a lot of the time we are just asking them it's funny like we tell them to just get creative and like use the sauce and whatever way feels natural to them sometimes you know people are using it just for pizza and pasta but we also really try to push the product as a like very flexible and like universal household ingredient that people can use in more than just the obvious pizza and pasta ways.

16:18So a lot of times we'll also source creators who create very like creative and unique food content and really push them to use it in like the most creative way they can like as a dip or as a soup or as a filling to something and try and spark new ideas there like for their audiences.

16:38Jasmine:Something that I constantly hear brands asking is like what should I be spending on these influences it feels like the still the wild west of what is a normal rate yeah how do you decide what someone should get paid and like what's the norm I think my number one tip is to they will try and ask for your budget I would ask them for their rates first because they will throw like an arbitrary number at you and then you can come back and be like we only have the budget for this amount but you never know if like they're going to throw a rate at you that was ultimately way lower than you were even going to offer them.

17:14So I think it really depends on the brand and like the budgets that you're working with. But I a lot of the times I like to think of it as like, you know, this is an extra. So you're paying them three thousand dollars that they weren't going to have before. And they are usually more than likely going to take it if that's what you have to offer them. And they really do support and love the brand. So I think like negotiate, that is so important and you shouldn't feel afraid to do it because typically they're going to try and give you a number that's way higher than they expect to get.

17:46Jasmine:What's some other stuff that you need to think about when you're factoring in pricing? I'm thinking about like whitelisting or being able to put some ad spend behind a post or exclusivity. Like do you factor in anything like that? Yeah, I think it's like important to note that there is so much that goes into it other than just like the video itself being posted to their socials like there is paid spend and exclusivity we typically don't like pay for exclusivity just because it's usually like a really small period and I feel like it can be costly and I also feel like typically these creators aren't going to post back-to-back to pasta sauce brands anyway it'd be very niche content yeah it'd be crazy and then yeah I think in terms of like ad spend usually it's just like kind of a set percentage based on what your like initial video rate is for them I think it ranges anywhere from like 25 to 50 percent usually and so I mean some creators I think just reach such massive audiences that you don't even need that I think then there's also times where you really love the content this person is creating but it might not reach as many people as you want and that's when I feel like it could be useful to put some paid behind it.

19:01When you want your spring break to feel like, and your kid's pool day to feel like,

19:09Jasmine:and your hotel bed to feel like, oh, and room service to feel like, because at Hilton, hospitality feels like, your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton for this day. Okay. I want to talk about, this is turning into such a fun like little masterclass, by the way. I want to talk about brand partnerships. That's something else that I feel like comes under your umbrella of stuff that you're working on. Can you talk me through some of the partnerships that have been successful at the brands that you've worked with? Yeah. So when I was at Doe, a huge part of our strategy was creating limited edition flavors with different influencers and brands.

19:54We did a cookie dough that was for a summer Friday's launch. We also did a cookie dough with Four Sigmatic. It was like a cosmic brownie cookie dough utilizing their like hot cacao. And so that was a little more involved in actually creating a product that was like co-branded with another brand, but a really successful way to kind of tap into a completely different audience. Like we worked with a skincare brand, like as a food company and we were able to share audiences and introduce our products to complete new consumers. And with Saws, we're kind of starting to tap into that now. And we have some plans for next year of how we're going to try and do a little more of that.

20:39But there are also just really simple ways that we have worked with other brands in terms of like social content or even just like sharing like tips and just like meeting with the founders of different brands has been so fun. I I think utilizing their audiences in terms of like a digital perspective is a really simple and easy way to introduce your brand to new people without even having to create a whole new product. And you can do it with brands that don't seem like aligned, like right off the bat necessarily. Yeah, there's really simple ways to do it as well in terms of just like utilizing each other's email and SMS audiences, each other's social audiences.

21:18How do you do that?

21:18Jasmine:Like what are some examples of stuff that you've done that might leverage someone else's audience? I think, honestly, one of the simplest ways to do it is a giveaway. It's a really easy way to tap into another brand's audience. We also have loved working with other brands in terms of getting content created. And so splitting the cost of a UGC creator to create like a recipe or utilize the product in some way. And then you're both getting the content. You create a collab post together. So you're reaching those audiences. But then you're also doing it in a lower cost way, which is great. When you're doing those kind of bigger partnerships, I'm thinking like Summer Fridays and dough and creating a product.

22:00Jasmine:Like I can imagine that's really expensive to do or like relatively expensive to do. how do you make sure that that is successful what are you doing on the marketing engine behind it to make sure that you're making the most of leveraging that summer friday's audience yeah i mean i think first just making sure both brands are kind of pulling equal weight and have equal investment in the partnership is super important and then from there just making sure like all aspects of marketing are being touched in terms of like digital marketing like in-person field marketing making sure that like you have a social calendar planned you have emails set to go out every aspect of it is being touched and then also like if your audiences aren't reaching enough again like paid spend is a really helpful way to get the product out there to completely new audiences and being able to even split the cost of that with the other brands is really great when you have limited budget.

22:59Jasmine:Something that I've heard people ask, we do these like live mentor calls for our members in the group chat. And something that I hear people ask about collabs is like, okay, I'm a really small brand and how do I get someone's attention? Or like, how do I sell them another brand into the idea of partnering with me? Like, what can I offer them? Yeah. I actually love this question because I think one of my favorite parts of working in this industry and also what I love to do to get people's attention is like just giving them product and like trading product. Sometimes even before I reach out trying to approach them with a partnership idea, I'm just like, hey, can I send you our product?

23:36Like, do you want to try it? And for one, that's how I started working for Saws. I tried the product and was like, this is amazing. I wasn't really a pasta sauce eater before. I was typical like buttered noodles girl. And so when I tried the product, I was like, this is awesome. I see this going somewhere. And so I feel like if that could happen for me, that can happen for anyone else. And it's also just like exciting to like receive PR like as a non-influencer or just a normal person. And so I feel like that's like the first step. And then going from there, having some kind of like concrete ideas of, hey, I was thinking about it could be really cool to do this or this.