Finding Social Creators Before They Blow Up, with Jori Evans, Director of Social at MANSCAPED

0:00Did you know 21 % of media time spent in any given day is with audio, but it only gets 5 % of media budgets. This represents a huge gap in your brand and media strategy. Learn about the largest addressable audio ecosystem at www.seriousxmmedia.com. slash Daniel. The most viral piece of content Manscaped ever made cost almost nothing, took a day, and came from two film students that slid into their DMs. Welcome back to another Flashback Friday, pulling out an episode out of our vault that's still worth every minute of your time. This week we're revisiting my conversation with Jory Evans, who leads creator and organic strategy at Manscaped.

0:49Recorded right as they were gearing up for Super Bowl campaign, Jory's resume alone is worth a listen. From pre-influencer celebrity seeding to running social at Microsoft to building the meme machine at Slim Jim, we get into what actually goes into 20 hours of Super Bowl ad pitches and why Manscaped chose to keep AI out of it entirely. If you work with creators, influencers, or organic social in any capacity, this one is full of tactics you could steal. Diving in now. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies.

1:41The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. We are back with another episode of the Market Millennials Podcast. Today I have a really cool guest, Jory Evans from Manscaped. We are going to talk about how they're utilizing creators, how they're setting up for a big event coming up that people know happened in February, and we'll talk about that. And yeah, all the good things. But I want to start off and welcome Joy to the podcast and ask her how she got into marketing. So let's kick that off.

2:23Jori Evans:Thanks for having me. How I got into marketing, I tell everybody that it's never linear when you're starting your career on this. I was a comms major when you needed to have an EDU address at Facebook to be on Facebook. So social didn't exist. And I hate that I age myself when I say that, but it's true. So social media hadn't really been carved out just yet in the marketing world. And after college, I was a diamond broker and a jewelry designer to quickly pay off student loans. And that evolved into me moving down to Austin, Texas and running marketing for an estate and vintage jewelry website and learning how to integrate her jewelry with celebrities.

3:08Jori Evans:So it was like pre-influencer days of getting them into red carpets and film and magazine editorials and building kind of that muscle of how do we influence people as Instagram is starting to grow, as Pinterest is starting to grow. I did that for about two years and it was a really interesting type of world to be in. You're all of a sudden on the phone with like Dwayne Wade's agent getting Georgian jewelry for Anna Wintour's birthday. And then we had like Deborah Messing reaching out. Her father was a jeweler and we used her as an influencer, predating influencer content. And then I evolved into quickly going from somewhere with no red tape to build this small website to working for Microsoft out in Seattle and running all of their cloud and enterprise social media accounts.

4:04Jori Evans:So I went from somewhere with the smallest budget, no red tape, to the biggest, you know, one of the biggest companies in the world with all of the red tape, but all of the access to measurement, support, even then, you know, the legal support as well, which is great and then not so great whenever you're working in social. So that was kind of my tipping point into the world of social. And from there, I've gone and jumped around from a lot of different brands, from Groupon to Amazon Music to Taco Bell, and then notoriously Slim Gym, which was like the crown jewel of Instagram meme marketing right at its very peak, which was always, you know, a fun one and very much has informed where I'm at with Manscaped right now, to so both are really fun brands too like some gym very fun brand to work with manscape really like i feel like less guard there's always guardrails but more freedom to have fun than a microsoft or an amazon music type brand um i want to go into so you you started your career having to place with all these celebrities.

5:18And celebrities used to be like the influencers before people started blowing up on social media. But I want to know, like, what is the process now to finding those per se up-and-coming creators that are worth it, not overpriced, before they blow up on all these platforms? So what is your process to find those type of creators?

5:41Jori Evans:Yeah, it's evolved, I want to say, almost every six months now, because I think we are all so very internet savvy now. Consumers are very internet savvy as to when they're being sold to because it's such overconsumption. So having smart marketing where people can associate yourself to your brand in a way that feels authentic is kind of what we're trying to break through. I would say picking creators that feel authentic to the voice that you have portrayed within your brand and your humor and sticking to that is probably your best North Star. For instance, and to go back to Slim Jim, it was during COVID that we found Mark Ribier, who is now known as like, oh my gosh, what's his name now?

6:32Jori Evans:I can't remember what he refers to himself. It's like Beats Daddy or something like that. But Mark was basically doing live streams in his living room in his boxers. And we reached out and we were one of the first brands to work with Mark. And we found him as somebody that would be big on Twitch, would associate with our audience. And one of the things that I learned very early on was giving them as much free reign as possible. And because Mark was an improviser, we had to build this contract around improvising. And one of the things about Mark was basically, you know, you can do whatever you want short of you cannot be charged for a felony.

7:11Jori Evans:If you're charged for a felony, that totally voids our contract with you. And it was one of the craziest contracts, but the end result was getting such organic content with Mark. And then, you know, a year later, he's like headlining Bonnaroo. He just completely blows up. And from learning in that negotiation and seeing the content and the result of it is what really taught me moving forward of how I wanted to work with influencers and creators. When I arrived at Manscaped, we are very well known for affiliate marketing and finding a lot of our paid ads that come through to you. We also are known for podcast commercials.

7:55Jori Evans:One of the things that we were missing is this kind of organic piece showing how much people love our brand and especially the humor. And what I built out early on when I started here was something called the Makers Network was something I pitched to our C-suite. And really what it was, was how do we get more authentic creators that want to make content for us, but in a way that gives them a lot of creative free reign. And one of the great things about Manscaped is that we're a really small company. So you get to work really closely with our C-suite, with our CMOs and collaborate on these ideas.

8:34Jori Evans:And they're always very supportive. And I had a really great response from the team and they said, you know, here's a little bit of budget, which I think anyone who works in organic social knows hearing that you're getting budget, you're going, oh my God, like, what do I do with, what do I do with a budget? I'm worked with, you know, I can work with a rubber band and a paper clip. And now I have, I can write a check to somebody. Like, even if it's not that much, it's still something. And we're so scrappy and learning how to make that stretch as far as possible. So what I did was I started to look at film students.

9:05Jori Evans:And I found, I slid into the DMs of these two filmmakers at USC. And we were starting this campaign about face pics. And the insight was, how do we get men to send face pics more often and less dick pics? And we worked with a really great research group up in Canada called the Orgasm Institute, is it Orgasm Institute, Orgasm Lab, to build a case, not to build a case, but to do some research and build a research paper around why men decide to send dick pics. and what was really exciting about this campaign was for us to kind of reposition ourselves as a brand from ball trimming brand to a man carrier, like everywhere brand.

9:54Jori Evans:That we have shampoo, that we have beard trimmers, that we have nail clippers, we have cologne, we have boxers, we have all these different things. We're not just a brand about balls. And we tapped into these creators while also working with a creative agency and we gave a very short brief. The brief really was the insight from the research. And the other part of this brief was it's just going to live in organic social. So no red tape. We're not looking to clear this for network television. We're not looking to hit a certain time frame. We're not looking to hit certain product beats. What would you do with this?

10:30Jori Evans:and we put it into their hands and they flipped around a piece of content. You know, they shot it in a day and a half and they flipped around a piece of content that's now our most viral piece of content we've ever had as a company. Yeah, I remember the, like, faking, taking a picture of down low and it's just like, it's showing the guy's face at the end and you're just like thinking like, oh, is he? But it's also good because, like, I've been a Manscaped customer for a long time and I it's kind of I was scared to be a Manscaped customer but just like telling people because people and I use it on my face but like I assumed like if people think I have a Manscaped um like razor they're gonna think something else of me so I was like kind of low-key like I have a Manscaped razor um but then like now it's like more normalized but I think like brands like that's one thing of like changing the narrative of hey it's not all about like grooming everywhere it's about you can also people also are trying to do face bit like have a good clean face which i think is a a cool way of doing that and could you give it a little like i just want to go into detail because i know you also have a big campaign coming up like what is a process like what does it look like for people who want to create you didn't know this was going to go viral, but it did go viral.

11:55But like, what does it look like, the inputs to create that output? Like, what is it like from, I came up with like this idea came about, I had, this was the, then the brief was created and there's like, what does that look like end to end?

12:09Jori Evans:It's, you know, for us, it was such a different process. If you were to compare this to, you know, working with a typical agency relationship, and I don't want to discount working with a really great agency. We worked with a really great creative agency to come up with this campaign and come up with this idea about to send face pics instead. But when you work on the social end of it, you aren't as close to those agency creative relationships. You have to figure out how you support on organic. And I think you look at it as the lack of budget is almost a plus than it is a disservice to you. And you have to figure out a way that you work around it.

12:48Jori Evans:One of the things that we worked around this was we didn't want influencer marketing. everybody knows what influencer marketing looks like now no one believes it and when you work with these creators one of the pluses is that we're not we are not looking for these makers as um influence or influencers we're not looking for their channel following we're not looking for how many followers they have we are looking for really strong creative points of view and especially with younger creators that want to get their foot in the door and that are really hungry for it. I also want to just add that we compensate these creators to these makers.

13:26Jori Evans:So this isn't like a, you know, you get some time on our channels and that's, that's all that there is. There's compensation involved for them. And then there's bonuses involved whenever it performs well. It's not a perfect science yet. We really struck gold. Like I want to say that like with Zach and Ryan, these, these two students who have now graduated are really like just incredible guys as well. They really dialed in on what the brand was. But I think what was beneficial was a couple of things. Was unlike working with an agency, you're going through, what does casting look like? What does the clothes look like?

14:05Jori Evans:What does the set look like? And you have 15 to 20 different people in a room making all these decisions and signing it off. We kept this to about, I want to say five people in the room to make these decisions. And for the most part, most of the decision making was left up to Zach and Ryan and to their discretion to keep it, to keep their vision kind of holistic throughout the whole thing. And so I really learned in this that the less cooks in the kitchen, the better. And that's how we came out with something so great and so quickly. And I think another component of this was I was really lucky to have the support of internal being okay with that process and really respecting the fact that the reason it was so good was because we were so hands-off.

14:55Jori Evans:Another thing that was really great was that our CMO, Marcelo, saw the content for what it was and said, I think this needs to go further than organic social. Like, why don't we put it some big Like, where do we put it? We put it on Netflix during WWE Raw one night. And then all of a sudden, it just took off on X organically. All of a sudden, it's 100 ,000 organic views. Then it's 1 million. Then it's 2 million. And I think we cracked 100 million in under four months on organic views of this piece of content. And so what's beautiful about this was that because we struck such gold early on, it's only enforced this program.

15:36Jori Evans:And I've only gotten a little bit more incremental support to keep searching for these types of people. And then what's also great for Zach and Ryan is this builds into their portfolio. And now I know that they're highly sought after filmmakers for these spots. And they're, I think, 22. too. So something that we've also started to think about and are building is working specifically with different film schools and trying to build maybe a feeder program where it's school credit mixed in with compensation for this. It's a way for them to build their portfolio and get their foot in the door. And we know, a lot of us, I think, know how hard it is for young creatives to get their foot in the door right now, especially with AI, that this is a way to kind of still in like still in try and instill the motivation that there is still a place for young creatives in this industry what people also don't realize when they think of like organic social is they they don't realize that it goes beyond um like your channels are one thing but getting shares beyond other channels are something else that you could work towards and when people like having a social strategy they're thinking how could i promote this on my channel but like promoting it on other platforms give it the ability to be shared by other creators by other people and that's actually what something you want i think that's a really interesting thing learning from that and i also think the importance of having social in the room to like know like getting the right shots getting because if social is not in the room of making these things they're not getting the right shots for the right platforms, making sure that, hey, do we have a shot for Instagram?

17:25Do we have a shot for YouTube? Do we have a shot for TikTok? Because all these platforms behave differently. And if social is not in the room, you're not going to get that prime content to be able to work on all platforms. Right.

17:39Jori Evans:I think one of the things that I noticed that we also benefited from was that this spot specifically got organically clipped around the internet. We didn't realize how many people were going to take the original piece of content. There was a 60 cut and a 30 second cut and how many people took it and ran with it. And then all of a sudden it's I think it was written about in, was it in Amsterdam, Christina, or like in GQ Denmark or something like that about the campaign was picked up. And then all of a sudden, one of the people that worked for Save the Children about what a great subject matter this was, like all of a sudden This just started to reach pockets of people that we never imagined that it would reach.

18:19Jori Evans:And then every time it showed up in front of a new audience, it took off again and again and again to the point that we're still having a hard time really tracking how far this has gone because it continues to this day garnering traction and more eyes. The thing that I wish that's difficult about it is that because of that opening shot with him opening his, like he's about to take the picture, is that it took us away from being able to get a lot of clearance for network television. Because of our subject matter and what our products do, we do run into that with network TV. You know, Disney's not going to be like, yeah, let's throw that on before, you know, an episode of Hannah Montana.

19:01Jori Evans:But, you know, it was a good learning experience that I think next time around with these creators, I would say, you know, there's always a potential that we could end up putting this in more places. Let's make a version that's a little bit more mindful of network television, which then kind of brings me into what we're going through working for Super Bowl. Super Bowl has been another thing that we have done a big learning curve on. How do you promote this brand again for network television clearance on the biggest stage possible? And that's kind of what we've been going through the past three months or so as we've been working on the creative and the Super Bowl campaign.

19:42Well, let's go into that. I mean, that portion of what is it like with being in such a walking the line of a brand that has like crazy could go crazy versus not go crazy? What is it like towing the line of making it on brand enough to fit the manscape vibe, but also getting it approved to get further on networks and stuff like that? What does that look like when you're briefing and making sure it still toes that line that it still fits Manscaped vibes?

20:18Jori Evans:I think it was, I think it's a really difficult problem to solve. And I think when we briefed everyone to pitch, we had a very extensive pitching process. There were a lot of places that threw their hats in the ring. I also do want to add that those creators who did the post-pix clarity content, we included them in the pitching process for Super Bowl. So they were also, you know, these creators that we find and work with, we do want to elevate them continuously and have a longer-term working relationship with them. And they were part of that process. I think what was really interesting about this was telling all these people, look, we need this to be cleared for network television up front.

21:01Jori Evans:and also for us to know going into it of, okay, this isn't going to feel like our normal equation of content that we would typically make. It's going to feel a little uncomfortable for us too because we know we're working alongside some significant guardrails that we don't typically work against. So there were a lot of different iterations of storytelling that didn't center around balls. And it was very weird for us to go, well, is it funny for our audience if it's netballs? Because we've created such like a cul-de-sac of a following. Cul-de-sac pun like not intended, but I feel like it's always inadvertently there.

21:43Jori Evans:And it was a really uncomfortable process, I think, for us at first. And in a good way, in a good learning curve way, because that's where the brand is going. So I think it was a really good exercise for all of us to kind of start settling in and comfortable of all these different points of views and storytelling ways of, you know, we're everywhere now. We dominate the bathroom. We're not just a bottle-trimming company. So we had to shift a little bit in that comfort. But then what we always came back to was Manscaped's known for this notorious humor. And that was always our baseline and our North Star is that Manscaped humor.

22:17Jori Evans:And as long as we could ground our scripts in that and that point of view, we felt like we were still on the right trajectory and not alienating any audiences, but also being able to bring in new audiences. Yeah, I like that. I think, I mean, I think going on like values versus just one messaging point is of like balls, for example. I think the values, if the values stay the same on a social campaign, then we're always going to be humorous. We're known to be funny. We're known to getting the message out in a fun way. We've done these viral campaigns. And we're trying to go further than just saying we do this one thing because we want people to know that people can also get a face razor or a body razor or whatever they're trying to get.

23:07And like you said, dominating the bathroom is a great line where it takes away from one area to like the whole situation in a bathroom. I think that's a good way of guardrailing it enough to say, let's keep it at least PG, but also be funny at the same time.

23:27Jori Evans:One of the ways that we figured out of wanting to kind of balance the scales a little bit was that we still have organic social to play around with. We still need to be able to promote that Manscaped is in the Super Bowl. We have a very specific time slot. We are right before the coin toss, which is so great to be able to tell people exactly when your spot will play. That's very rare in a way that you can say like appointment television. This is when your spot's going to air. and we thought that it was still interesting that you can't say balls on network television. So for Organic Social, what we did was we've built this strategy of content that's coming out right now, of what it's like to build a Super Bowl commercial at Manscaped when you cannot say balls, when you cannot refer to balls, when you cannot show anything like that.

24:18Jori Evans:And so it's kind of a la The Office of very lo-fi content to the point that like we even got our legal team being like, did we write this memo to you? Like, did we, where did the, and it's all fake, you know, it's all meme stuff, but it's bringing everybody along for the ride and it's engaging that audience that still loves that content, but getting them excited for the fact and kind of setting up the expectation of like, this will not be a ball commercial, but it is going to be the manscaped humor that you know and love. i actually want to go into because there's a lot of social conversation out there about should my brand do memes or not or create memeable content or not and i want to you've been at slim jim which is a very memeable brand you're creating a you're creating a memeable content and that's obviously how a lot of things get spread if you see i always tell people if you look at your dms from friends 80 of it is probably memes um or sending memes back and forth and so if you're not creating memes as a brand even you can get into the licensing problems and all that stuff but i want to go into how you think about creating memeable content and what is that process like how much of your day do you spend listening to content for me it's constant.

25:47Music on a wall. Whatever podcast my dear wife is blasting in the morning. In the car. YouTube music for my toddler's latest favorite song. Audio is with you when no other medium is. That goes for your audience too. Sirius XM Media is the single largest audio ecosystem in the US, reaching 9 in 10 Americans. Time to work audio in your advertising plan. Learn more about the largest addressable audio ecosystem at www.seriousxmmedia.com slash Daniel.

26:26Jori Evans:Yeah, there's a couple different ways to think of it. The way that I kind of think about it for Manscaped, and I thought about this way for Slim Jim, is that memes is like the love language of bros and like the people who are following are, you know what I mean? And like, there's, I have a lot of different guy friends who talk about and they'll say like, we haven't talked about anything of substance, but we've been sending memes back and forth for like three months now. And that's just how we interact. And for us, it's like, well, how do we keep building that caliber of meme content for these guys to keep talking to each other?

26:59Jori Evans:And we see it in our shares. The share stuff takes off like crazy. We're looking more for shares than we are for comments or engagements or reach at this point. We want to be able to know that we're actually hitting the nail on the head of the way these guys talk about grooming for the most part. And then there's a couple other things that I think you have to be aware of because I don't think it works for every brand unless you're able to talk to your audience in a way that they talk about. They use memes on their DMs. I think that's the way you have to infiltrate it. but you also have to as a social team know what corners of the internet you're familiar with and that there are corners of the internet that you are not familiar with and we have done a really good job working with makers of different meme creators who dominate different corners of the internet that our news feed that our feeds don't give to us right away so we've got one side of meme creators that are very in touch with dating culture, female meme culture.

28:02Jori Evans:And then we have another part of meme creators who are very into the deep, dark meme corners of the internet that they know when a meme is starting to creep up with this type of audience and they're able to spit it out so that we're jumping on the train right away. And collectively, those together gives us a really well-rounded kind of meme language with the audience that we already have and the audience that we're looking to tap into. Yeah, I think the key to meme or any good social is like you have to win the relevancy battle and what trends to jump on battle. And those are two separate battles.

28:45Relevancy is like you hitting the nail on the head with your audience. And then the trend battle is, okay, It's sneaking up on Reddit or it's sneaking up in this community. How do we like, because everybody knows Instagram is a week late to whatever happening on Reddit. So how do we take that Instagram? I mean, that Reddit meme that's starting to get fire and make it for my brand. And I think that's two different skill sets of knowing your audience and then curating the finding that up and coming next big thing, which is, I think, what happened with, which is two different skills. I think it's so hard to be someone who is great at relevancy and great at finding the next big thing.

29:31It's a hard game to play.