00;00;03;00 - 00;00;17;27
VO
Welcome to Dig In, the podcast brought to you by Dig Insights. Each week Jess Gaedeke chats with world class brand professionals to bring you the story behind the story of some of the most breakthrough innovations, marketing tactics, and campaigns.

00;00;18;00 - 00;00;38;13
Jess
Hi everybody. Welcome to the Dig In podcast. Today we're going to get social. We're going to go under the hood of social media strategy with someone who launched that discipline at four different companies. Today, I am happy to be joined by Christina Le, head of Marketing at Plot, and someone who considers creating content a personal hobby, and that says a lot.

00;00;38;13 - 00;00;42;07
Jess
So I can't wait to hear more about you. Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

00;00;42;09 - 00;00;49;05
Christina
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be part of this. I always love talking about anything and everything social related.

00;00;49;08 - 00;01;00;02
Jess
I love it. Well, we're going to do that. We're going to get into it here in a minute. But I love to start with an impromptu question to get things going. So you haven't heard this question yet. What's a fashion trend that you wish would never end?

00;01;00;05 - 00;01;25;02
Christina
I really love these, like, the business casual but wider leg trousers that they're bringing back. They're like high waisted but really wide legs. I hope they never go away, only selfishly, because I love the way it looks on myself. Yeah. They were to bring back like, any Y2K stuff. I might have to, like go stuff my head in the closet because.

00;01;25;02 - 00;01;27;24
Christina
that would just be detrimental.

00;01;27;27 - 00;01;39;06
Jess
Not a good era, I totally agree. But, Yeah. High waisted, wide, wide, leg trouser that that can stay, I like it. So, Christina, tell us a little bit about your background and your role today.

00;01;39;08 - 00;02;00;14
Christina
Yeah. So I've been a social media marketer, like I've worked in the space for the last decade. And today I'm, I'm head of marketing at this startup called Plot. Really, really great company. It's funny because I think ten years ago, when I first started out as an intern, I remember thinking like, oh, this is just going to be a stepping stone career.

00;02;00;14 - 00;02;38;01
Christina
I didn't actually think it’d become a full fledged career, but yet here we are. Nor did I ever anticipate becoming a head of marketing either. So that trajectory was just wild and in itself. But, now I feel like one of my biggest thing outside of my day to day responsibilities is that I really do love, talking about social in a way that I want people to put respect behind that title, because I think for so long, social media managers have been sort of like tied to this notion that they're the bottom of the totem pole and that it is a stepping stone career, and that it's not something that, you know, businesses should

00;02;38;01 - 00;02;55;03
Christina
take as a crucial function of a business. But, you know, obviously all that has changed. So I'm sort of like becoming more of an advocate for junior social media managers. And I hope like this will become a space that people could wear this title with pride. So yeah, that's a little bit about me.

00;02;55;05 - 00;03;11;28
Jess
Yeah. And we're going to really dig into that aspect because you are an advocate and this discipline is so important, and it should be so much more prominent among, you know, marketing leadership. So so let's dig in. You know, our listeners crave inspiration from other leaders. And one of the best ways to inspire is to tell a story.

00;03;12;05 - 00;03;28;03
Jess
And you have been that first social media marketer for a number of companies. And one of those companies where you currently are, Plot, you had an incredible product launch experience. This was such a crazy story. So first, give us the pitch of Plot. What’s that concept all about?

00;03;28;05 - 00;03;53;00
Christina
Yeah. So Plot at its core, what we do is we help social media marketing teams play and store and source content. But our claim to fame is that we are the first company to provide video social listening. And so we are really helping brands be able to amplify their reach with consumers and all the likes. But yeah, at our core, we're just here to help social media marketers do their job.

00;03;53;02 - 00;04;17;26
Christina
And, you know, we're really we're really great because we're such a baby brand. We work with some really high end, companies like, we have Tory Burch, Empire State Building, Prime Bites. It's like a really lot of well-known folks. And we've done that all through community outreach and, like, how we've sort of built a brand, which that is a good segue into, you know, the conversations around our product launch.

00;04;17;29 - 00;04;43;16
Christina
So a little back story when Plot - we launched last February, I just joined full time this past August. So in February, I was actually only sitting on Plot as a creative advisor. I was only here because I felt I was connected with, co-founders and more specifically the CEO, Megan. She basically was it started out with conversation in the DMs where she was like, can I just pick your brain?

00;04;43;16 - 00;04;59;23
Christina
I'd love to show you this product. Tell me what you think. Because, you know, you work in the social space for so long, I'd like to have an understanding of how it all went. You know, we chit chatted and like, it ended up being that, you know, I valued their mission so much. And I like, obviously it's built for people like me.

00;04;59;26 - 00;05;20;01
Christina
And then for the first time, somebody is actually putting, you know, social media marketers in front of what's driving business. And they were like, I really want at the core like how you do your job on a daily basis. And so it was a lot of thinking. And, at the time, I, I was like, I was like, you know, I love LinkedIn.

00;05;20;01 - 00;05;36;17
Christina
I can help you build your LinkedIn page, like, bring me on as a career advisor, we can help with the roadmap of the products. But most importantly, I want to build the brand. And so I kind of tied it to my own personal brand, which is already members of like social media marketers all across like different industries and everything like that.

00;05;36;19 - 00;06;02;02
Christina
And when we had our product launch, I actually reached out because, again, we're a baby brand. At the time, we did not have a lot of money. We were at like very seed stage. We had like $3 million. And you know, when you hire engineers and all this other stuff, your budget is very strapped. And so, I sort of used my personal relationships where I reached out to a lot of LinkedIn influencers, and I was just kind of like, hey, this is what we're building.

00;06;02;02 - 00;06;20;01
Christina
That's kind of my core mission. And I kind of use this whole like, because I'm not cold DMing them because it's not like I'm somebody they didn't recognize or know. We have communicated, built that relationship in the past. So I picked, I strategically picked 8 to 10 people and I was like, here's our mission, here's our goal. You know, this is my budget.

00;06;20;06 - 00;06;47;20
Christina
What can you do with this? I totally respect you. And I've always been a big advocate for people, you know, pricing themselves very high, like they should definitely value everything that they do. But then here I come, tails between my legs saying, hey, I don't have a big budget. I have like $100, you know, what can you do. And you know, what's funny is that when you are able to build these relationships where people don't feel like it's very transactional and you're just not using them for the sake of using them, they're more likely to support you and the things that you do.

00;06;47;20 - 00;07;04;14
Christina
So because I've had these relationships, these folks were so kind to be like, I'm happy to do this for free for you. And during our product launch on that day, it was our first big launch. It was actually our whole company launch where we're saying, like, you know, we're going beta. You guys can finally sign up for the product.

00;07;04;17 - 00;07;24;25
Christina
And we had created this whole video, that had some New York creators come into our studio, and we recorded it and did all these things, and then all of these, those 8 to 10 LinkedIn influencers, they were like, we're happy to share this, like on our own personal page. But what I did was, like, I stood away from telling them, like, this is what you should post.

00;07;24;25 - 00;07;41;06
Christina
This is what you say. I need you to post it on this hour. But because they work in social and they understand like the dynamic of how this works, they all just did it themselves. And the way they did it was so personal to them. And like why they want to support a business like Plot was building for people like them.

00;07;41;13 - 00;08;07;20
Christina
So it was just really like, you know, it was truly community led growth. And it was a perfect match. And the fact of like, we're not just picking some random person who just has a ton of followers on LinkedIn. No, we were very intentional with who we want to work with. And then it just so happened that you know, by the grace of really great luck and like, awesome community that they were so kindly to be able to say, like, happy to post free of charge, no worries.

00;08;07;22 - 00;08;22;03
Christina
And I think that actually landed us a lot of like news outlets and all these other things, like even Sprout Social did a whole blog piece about it where they're like, this is how you do like LinkedIn influencer partnerships done right. But if people asked us at the time and they were like, how much did you spend on it?

00;08;22;03 - 00;08;28;25
Christina
I was like, we, we, like, nothing. We basically we're just like, charity, please.

00;08;28;25 - 00;08;45;28
Jess
Right, right, help a girl out. Talk more about that. Because if you think about some of our listeners that are in B2B marketing or just any marketer who's thinking about leveraging, you know, influencers as part of their strategy, how do you select those influencers? What are some of the characteristics you look for in sort of that community that you built?

00;08;46;03 - 00;09;08;15
Christina
Yeah, I think now with social it’s very hard, right? You have a lot of people who have, I think in the past it was like, you know, they have a lot of followers, they have a lot of reach. Let's work with them. And that's kind of it. But nowadays it's like, because there are so many creators out there, there's so many posts happening, it's really hard to be able to make that genuinely good pairing with the company.

00;09;08;15 - 00;09;29;06
Christina
And I think the worst that can happen with a brand is that you partner with the wrong person who doesn't necessarily align with your either your company values or you know, what it is that you're trying to promote in general. I think when you want it to be really, really good, you have to just think like, what is my end goal with this campaign?

00;09;29;07 - 00;09;48;16
Christina
Is it just pure awareness? Do I just want to reach as many people as possible, or do I want to be intentional and actually reach the subset of people that I know are going to eventually buy from me? And when I think of that, like in Plot’s case, we knew that, you know, like we knew from the very beginning that our ICPs were going to be social media marketers.

00;09;48;16 - 00;10;15;01
Christina
Like not we're not saying we're not generalizing all marketing. We're not saying like, it's going to be for, you know, data folks or any of that stuff. We were very, very intentional. We were like, we're going to build it for social media marketers. And that's where we're going. That's who we're talking to. And luckily for us is that LinkedIn is such a good place for people to sort of like, form their community on there, especially social media marketers who are avid like bloggers in their own right.

00;10;15;01 - 00;10;34;03
Christina
It's like they spill their feelings online. And honestly, that's how I built my personal brand, is that I remember thinking a couple like years back, I was in a job that I didn't want to be in, and I was like, I never want to apply for a job again. But I also didn't have anybody as a mentor to be able to tell me, like, am I thinking correctly when it comes to this job?

00;10;34;03 - 00;10;59;10
Christina
Because it was still so new? And so when I started posting on LinkedIn, I started getting validation, started getting advice and all these other things from people who are working in this field. So I guess the long winded way, because now I'm like driving into other areas. But the long winded way of saying is like knowing who you're talking to and being able to find the folks who already are speaking naturally to that subset group of folks, like the social media marketers that we work with.

00;10;59;10 - 00;11;22;10
Christina
They're already posting about social media problems. They're already posting their hot takes. They're posting their advice, they're already sharing these things, because then that removes the work out from us. Because if you choose somebody just because they have a large following, but they're not necessarily, you know, talking about the things that you care about, it's a lot harder to educate them and have them to, like, switch their thinking and to write a certain way to try to attract a certain group of folks.

00;11;22;10 - 00;11;41;04
Christina
It just doesn't work. And so, yeah, you do have to take a lot of time to kind of like sit back and really analyze folks for a while. And it just so happened that because I was already in that community, it was easier for me to make to craft a list. And there were a few folks actually on that list that were like, oh no, Christina, not right now.

00;11;41;04 - 00;11;47;21
Christina
But then after that one launch, they're like, oh, we're so happy to like, now be a part of it if you need us.

00;11;47;24 - 00;12;08;00
Jess
Well, the power of that community is is crazy. And so so you are preparing for this launch of really the company. But along with the product, you queue up these influencers to your point. You try not to be too prescriptive and sort of let it come from their genuine voice. Did anything go wrong? No. Was there anything? You were like, oh God, face plant, why did I do that?

00;12;08;03 - 00;12;33;06
Christina
So there were a couple of hiccups that happened along the way. Like some of which, you know, we didn't necessarily tell people what time to post or anything like that, but there were a couple folks who posted like three days later. So it wasn't like on the exact day and then, but but it wasn't anything major, like, it wasn't anything catastrophic that I was just like, oh, no, I should have been more strict with the briefs.

00;12;33;08 - 00;12;48;27
Christina
And I think it's because, you know, we got to work with folks who are used to doing campaigns like this day in and day out, because they do it for their full time job. And so they just get to sit on the opposite side where they get to be the influencers for once versus being on the brand side.

00;12;48;29 - 00;12;59;02
Jess
Right? Oh, that's interesting. Kind of yeah. Swaping sides there. So how did you know it was a success? Did you have a milestone like, you know, some metric you were trying to hit with that launch?

00;12;59;05 - 00;13;22;05
Christina
Yeah. So everybody we wanted everybody to schedule a demo or sign up for our product through the self-serve site. And what ended up happening was LinkedIn had such a huge surge. I think we had like, 500% increase in scheduling a demo. And that's just a good indicator to us to say, like, hey, you know, there is there is momentum when you are really intentional with where you want to target.

00;13;22;05 - 00;13;40;29
Christina
Because we could have just done paid ads, and I'm sure that would have brought in some results as well. But I think going from the genuine route where people are all about word of mouth and they're all about the social proof and everything like that, when you can do it this way I think that that is more long standing than, you know, just doing a simple ad that people could click and maybe bounce afterwards.

00;13;41;01 - 00;13;42;24
Jess
Yeah.

00;13;42;27 - 00;13;58;16
Jess
Yeah. And when we were chatting, I asked you a question about, hey, how is this different when you're thinking about B2B marketing versus B2C? And you had a really strong response to that, which I loved. What's your feeling on the line between B2B marketing versus, direct to consumer?

00;13;58;19 - 00;14;19;00
Christina
I think when it comes to B2C and DTC, B2B is a lot more challenging when it comes to promoting a brand. And I say this because I'm not I'm not discrediting DTC influencers or creative programs or anything like that, but it's a lot easier to sell a product that you can wear or show off or like, you know, eat.

00;14;19;02 - 00;14;42;13
Christina
But when it comes to a B2B product or software or anything like that, it's very difficult to explain use case and to make sure you're hitting the point that's valuable for the person. On the other side, I do think that when you think about the audience that you're speaking to, you shouldn't change your languaging just because it's B2B or DTC, because at the end of the day, you know, it's a human on the other side, however, I think it's your messaging that gets really hard.

00;14;42;19 - 00;15;03;22
Christina
And it's and anybody who has had experience with sort of doing a product walk through or anything, it's very hard to speak concisely and succinctly. And also when it comes to the state of social, to be on trend and to be, like, still likable. So you have a very short opportunity to capture somebody’s attention. And then after that you can either keep it or you lose it.

00;15;03;22 - 00;15;23;15
Christina
And if you lose it, then you know they're not going to trust you in your next video. So it's really hard because B2B content, I mean, what does that saying where people are like, it's boring to bits because, you know, I think historically the content is very difficult to sort of like get through because you have all of these points that you're trying to make use of, like, hey, this will help you save time.

00;15;23;15 - 00;15;41;29
Christina
This will help you, you know, organize your life better. This will help you do this and that. But I think the challenging part is that they recognize that the folks on the other side who are busy scrolling through their Instagram, their LinkedIn, their social channels. They're not there to absorb that concrete information that you're throwing out. You know?

00;15;41;29 - 00;16;02;01
Christina
So it's like, how do you balance that? Because, you know, you have to like sort of, and anyways, what I'm saying is I think B2B creators specifically because they've worked in the field and everything, I think they naturally have that built in them. It's sort of like a muscle that you train that I think with DTC, it's just different.

00;16;02;05 - 00;16;19;11
Jess
It was a nuance, which was really important because I think the core was you're always marketing to a human being. That was sort of one of the points that that you shared. But what you're saying, first of all, you're preaching to the choir because at our company we have, you know, we have a services part of our business that's highly consultative.

00;16;19;16 - 00;16;37;00
Jess
And then we have a software portion of our business. And when it comes to marketing, that portion of the business, what you listed off, it sounds like impossible, right? You have to be succinct. You have to be resonant. You have to be on trend. You have to be likable like holy, what else do you have to be to be, you know, an accepted method?

00;16;37;02 - 00;16;57;21
Jess
Yeah, it's a lot. But, but I love what you're talking about. I think it's going to give our listeners that either if they are B2B marketers or, some version of that, or work directly with consumers, that thinking about how your influencers and your strategy needs to be so pointed at what matters to that human being on the other end and very relevant to their context.

00;16;57;21 - 00;17;20;25
Jess
So you gave the example of I'm scrolling through my socials like what actually is going to capture my attention as a professional during my working day versus I'm, you know, scrolling through social as a consumer and I see an Instagram ad like, we really believe in that, you know, kind of implicit, you know, visceral reaction that that people have to marketing messaging and then it needs to hit it needs to hit on a lot of different fronts.

00;17;20;28 - 00;17;22;01
Jess
It's not easy.

00;17;22;04 - 00;17;52;24
Christina
It's not. And I've actually and the joke has always been internally where I was like, I would love I would love to be able to walk a day on the other side and be able to be like, you know, here Christina, like, you know, go promote this lip gloss. Because the amount of content that I would create on lip gloss alone would be next level versus the, you know, all the little details about this particular software that sometimes a lot of us, a lot of B2B creators, like I'm lucky to be able to work at Plot, where I kind of like, know our mission and our core and what we're building for.

00;17;53;00 - 00;18;18;18
Christina
But a lot of times people work for companies like fintech and like all these other companies that are not as sexy of a brand, right? And it can get really challenging to try to break through that noise and make it really engaging. And so I just think, once you're able to sort of break through that, though, and once you're able to sort of like figure out the ways to capture that attention and retain it, I think that's a really good skill to have up your sleeve.

00;18;18;22 - 00;18;27;25
Christina
So maybe, you know, as a B2B creator, there are some uphill battle. So you got to fight. But once you cross that hill, it's all it's all easy peasy from there, you know?

00;18;27;28 - 00;18;50;18
Jess
Well, you make it sound easy, that's for sure. So let's go to the next part of the conversation, which is all about you as a thought leader. And you've already expressed a lot of your advocacy for the social media discipline and what you've described so far. But I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about what makes you so passionate about, you know, furthering the discipline of social media marketing and what it really means.

00;18;50;21 - 00;19;10;08
Christina
Yeah, I think, when I first joined this industry, it was still very, fairly new. I mean, I like to tell the interns that I work with right now, I'm older than Google. I came before Google. And then when we think about the social networks and how much it has changed and how quickly it has changed it, it's the one job that keeps you humble forever.

00;19;10;12 - 00;19;40;24
Christina
But the reason why I'm such an advocate around this topic is because I remember just thinking, like, everyone always calls us an interns job and that they think, oh, it's fun, it's trendy. The reason why you are in it is because you're the young one. You understand how to work a camera. So here you go. And I think what was missing for a long time is that the folks who are in this career early on, they didn't really have that guidance around like how you would expect from traditional marketing.

00;19;40;27 - 00;20;09;18
Christina
You know, I mean, they still split marketing and digital marketing up. And why did they do that? Because there are a lot of people who have that traditional marketing mindset that are still not aligned with what's happening in the digital space, the digital space being that is very heavily leaning towards social now. And I think social being one component where it was just a place that, you know, you could throw a Facebook ad on sometimes and you can show like a bit of your work culture has now become such a crucial component to every single business because it provides such impact.

00;20;09;18 - 00;20;25;19
Christina
People are going there, you know, for some social proof, you know, when your customers are upset about something, they're going to complain and make a video about it on social, you know, if they want to contact support the most likely contact through our social channels before they reach out through an email. And it's just the way the nature goes.

00;20;25;19 - 00;20;48;23
Christina
So that being said, I've found that while the pace in which social has become such a crucial point for businesses, the growth with having helping social media marketers has not grown as fast like they are not given enough resources. They are not even given enough team members to be able. You usually have 1 to 2 team members. Max.

00;20;49;00 - 00;21;09;01
Christina
If you're in a medium size, you know, company, large companies can probably afford 4 or 5. But I'm really thinking in the next few years, you're going to start seeing more platform specialists. You're going to see people who are very specialized with, you know, certain areas of social. You already see that with paid versus organic. And then you also now have social support.

00;21;09;03 - 00;21;40;05
Christina
But I think, that being said, we're all still kind of working and trying to like, understand the nuances of social as we go and mentorship in every job, I think is very important. I think in life, having a mentor and some type of advisor is always helpful. But, so because I didn't have that and I had to rely on going on social on LinkedIn specifically to sort of like seek out those folks, I wanted to also be one of those voices that could help.

00;21;40;05 - 00;21;58;28
Christina
Like, now I take a lot of coffee chats with, you know, college students and everything like that because I just think, like, we need to be more accessible for folks. We need people to, one, not think of this job as like another job that anybody could do just because they can work a camera, that there is some strategy behind it.

00;21;58;28 - 00;22;18;00
Christina
There is a lot of hard work and dedication, but it's also something that, you know, you could really train yourself to have a really long, fulfilling career with. So I just want to be a voice for the folks who, you know, are saying it louder for the people in the back, because I went through a long period of time where I've always felt like be seen, not heard.

00;22;18;07 - 00;22;45;14
Christina
You just are the distribution arm. You're not the one who can take the creative lead. And now I feel like I'm a lot more comfortable and confident with a lot of ideas and thinking, because I nobody’s going to know these platforms better than me. I live, breathe and die on social. And so I think just having that mindset and being able to like show people how to think about this, but then also being able to mentally separate yourself from, like, your full time social media marketing job.

00;22;45;14 - 00;22;56;15
Christina
And then you're I'm just a consumer and I just want to enjoy social as it is. So there's a lot of layers there. But that's that's pretty much why I just want to be the voice that I didn't have.

00;22;56;17 - 00;23;11;13
Jess
Yeah, well, it's good for you to take that charge and sort of help the next generation grow and learn and there are a lot of probably misconceptions about social media marketing, either the discipline itself or the role. What are some of those misconceptions you think?

00;23;11;15 - 00;23;40;20
Christina
I think that it's just one. If people are still treating social as a distribution arm for your content marketing team, then that's wrong. If you think that social is just going to be an area that's going to be direct impact to revenue, that's probably wrong as well. I think social how you should see it is that it works in multiple different functions, and how you position it should be that you should treat it as such, like you should really allocate the resources, like if people if our customers are going to come to social for support, how do we best support them on there?

00;23;40;27 - 00;23;59;04
Christina
And like it's probably not going to be the same as email support, right? Or like indirect chat. So how do you sort of like balance that out? And I think if you haven't worked in social before, it's very challenging to take on that role. Like I don't know if you've ever heard like in small teams when a social media manager goes on vacation.

00;23;59;07 - 00;24;13;29
Christina
Oh, it's like the entire world has just been out for two weeks. They're like, what are we doing? It's almost a little too stressful. So I just think like, you know, it's not an intense job, but it's also not a job for everyone.

00;24;14;07 - 00;24;17;09
Jess
Okay. And what's your hot take on the future of social media marketing?

00;24;17;11 - 00;24;38;22
Christina
I think, you're not going to have a single social media manager anymore. I think you're going to have platform specialists that are really going to show up and show out. I think social media managers will definitely level up to become chief marketing officers and everything like that, because social is not going to be, it's not going to be like, you know, white papers.

00;24;38;22 - 00;25;03;08
Christina
It's not going to go away. It's only going to grow more. Unfortunately for us, because I feel like also as I'm getting older, I do want more breaks from social media. But it is a core aspect of all our lives. So, yeah, I think there's not going to be the role. Social media manager is probably going to be more clearly defined as more of a senior level versus just you're just running all the channels and creating content all day.

00;25;03;10 - 00;25;19;29
Jess
Yeah. Well, that'll be an interesting evolution. And, it's funny when you say that you actually are craving more breaks from social media. This is just a cute anecdote because you have kids. You might appreciate this, but I was, you know, my kids are now 15 and 13, so it's like screen time is just it's not. I mean, their lives are screens, right?

00;25;20;06 - 00;25;36;19
Jess
But when they were little, I was trying to encourage them like, you know, we need to have lots of time off screens because it's not healthy. And my daughter, she's probably seven at the time, she goes, mommy, you are literally on a screen all day because I work on my computer and I'm like, and I just went, ooh, how do I come back to that one?

00;25;36;19 - 00;25;39;07
Jess
I'm kind of rethinking my life choices, right?

00;25;39;09 - 00;26;01;28
Christina
You know, between kids and TikTok, it keeps you humble. It keeps you humble all day long. My my, my son still goes to school. And when people ask him, you know what I do for a living? He was like, she works on social or something, is how he describes same as my mother, except my mother likes to say that I work on the internet, which I don't know the way she does it just sounds like it's another job.

00;26;02;00 - 00;26;04;27
Christina
And I'm like, please stop telling people...

00;26;04;27 - 00;26;07;08
Jess
On the internet, oh my God.

00;26;08;16 - 00;26;43;09
Christina
Yeah, it certainly keeps you humble. I am, I am very mindful of the impact around like mental health and social because I've worked on and this is actually another area that I want to start talking about more in general, too, is that social media marketers, it's really hard to separate, and take those breaks because when you are sort of responsible for all the communications online, everything like social, kind of a 24/7 job, like you think you're taking a break and you're on vacation, but it's kind of hard to go online and not see what's happening on the brand.

00;26;43;12 - 00;27;14;11
Christina
And so that's why I think we need to advocate for more resources and more help for social teams to be able to sort of have that mental space to do their job really well and also be very creative and do all these other things. But then to also, if they want somebody to be in this for the long run and to have like an actual like, you know, fulfilling career and not have them want to jump off a bridge, we need to start supporting that more and like just recognizing that it could be mentally taxing to do this.

00;27;14;13 - 00;27;31;28
Jess
Yeah for sure. Well, I'm glad you're bringing appreciation and awareness to that for sure. So let's go to the final dig. This is all about you. Just as a you know, a person consumer where you can take your professional hat off. Although I, I think you're probably the same person professionally and personally, but, what's the last product or service you bought

00;27;31;28 - 00;27;32;28
Jess
on impulse?

00;27;33;05 - 00;27;56;09
Christina
Oh, product or service I bought on impulse, I bought these, I'm so. I am such a bad consumer. Like, I, I fall into the trap all the time despite the fact I work in this field, but, the cheese grater that's all over TikTok right now with the handle. The spinning one. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I bought that. And I also bought these chili oil noodles and I bought Prime Bites brownies.

00;27;56;09 - 00;28;13;28
Christina
I am just if it's food related. And I keep seeing videos and videos and I'm like, it's clearly meant to be. I have to add to cart. And so the Cheese grater has been my most recent purchase that my husband was like, we have a mandoline. And I was like, I know, but this thing, you just push it and it spins.

00;28;14;00 - 00;28;23;19
Jess
That's awesome. It's working on you. Yeah. You can tell, what's the category or brand or product that you could rationalize any price point for? You just have to have it in your life.

00;28;23;21 - 00;28;46;20
Christina
Mixsoon is a it's a Korean beauty company and honestly I've used there being essence there moisturizer. It is so good. My pores are completely shrunk, like I have the smoothest skin. And so I don't care if they end up making their prices $300 like I will, but luckily for us at it's not $300, it's in like the $20-$30 range.

00;28;46;22 - 00;29;02;09
Christina
It's not bad, but it's so good it keeps your face moisturized all day long. And every but every time, every time I go somewhere, like at night, I don't even put makeup on anymore. I just do a whole facial thing, and then I go like, wow, why is your face so good looking? And, like, so clear? And it's just the Mixsoon.

00;29;02;11 - 00;29;04;00
Christina
It's great.

00;29;04;03 - 00;29;19;14
Jess
I love it, I love it. I get to learn about so many cool products from this conversation. That's excellent. And this one's my favorite. So brands have distinct personalities. What's the brand that you would date and what's the brand that you would marry? And they don't have to be the same brand. Let's be real.

00;29;19;17 - 00;29;45;04
Christina
A brand that I would date, I feel like just for the haha laughs I would probably date, I'd probably actually date Clickup because their brand has become such dad jokes lately. I don't know if you've seen their videos with the HR and it's like these two, it looks like dad content and I don't know, I just feel like I would date that because it's terrible jokes and that makes me laugh all day long.

00;29;45;04 - 00;30;01;24
Christina
It's engaging enough to keep me, and it's relatable and it's not, it's not toxic and telling me what to do and controlling. So I feel like that's kind of good. You know, I think I would marry a brand like Headspace. Only because like I would want somebody who could actually take care of me and understand me mentally and tell me, hey, you need a break.

00;30;01;26 - 00;30;03;19
Christina
It's like, yeah.

00;30;03;21 - 00;30;10;19
Jess
That's those are two great brands. Well, what keeps you inspired at work? Christina, you really inspired me today. But you know what keeps you going every day?

00;30;10;25 - 00;30;34;03
Christina
I think just being able to talk to so many people online and exchanging inside jokes with people and just understanding that way of communicating, that, that that's the joy in my day. I really I really do enjoy a good laugh. I think life is too serious sometimes. And that's why, as much as I hate to admit it, TikTok has become my favorite platform only because one,

00;30;34;05 - 00;30;48;05
Christina
again, it keeps me humble. Like I will never be told seven different ways that I am out of style than on TikTok. But you know, that being said, I do find a lot of hilarious hilarity throughout the time and I think we need just more of that.

00;30;48;05 - 00;31;04;00
Jess
I love it, I love it. Well, you can definitely pull off the high waisted trousers again, this coming back to that, don't let TikTok tell you any different, but this has been such a great conversation. I really do think that anyone that has any influence on marketing learned a lot about how to think about social, how to think about influencers.

00;31;04;00 - 00;31;07;08
Jess
So thank you so much for giving your wisdom and pleasure to have you.

00;31;07;10 - 00;31;09;22
Christina
And thank you so much for having me. This has been great.

00;31;09;25 - 00;31;16;04
VO
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