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Social Pros is one of the longest-running marketing podcasts in existence (10 YEARS and counting), and was recently recognized as the #1 Audio/Podcast Series by the Content Marketing Awards.
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Listeners get inside stories and behind-the-scenes secrets about how teams at companies like Google, Reddit, Glossier, Zillow, Lyft, Marvel, and dozens more, staff, operate, and measure their social media programs. With 600+ episodes, the Social Pros Podcast brings the humanity of social media to the forefront, while providing incredibly useful marketing strategies that listeners can immediately implement.
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@MissTriathlon
Tonia Coletta, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing for Molson Coors Canada, joins to the Social Pros Podcast to share her winning approach to the fine art of balancing brands, audiences, and messaging across social.
Social Drinkers
Social DrinkersLike any other brand, many breweries have a wide variety of offerings for their clientele. From reds to porters to IPAs, the spectrum of available flavors is huge. Since most consume these products socially, it makes sense that marketing over social is a match made in heaven.
However, not all brews were created equal.
When one of your products takes off, it’s a logical step to try and borrow tactics for your other products. It worked for one, why not try it for the other?
Tonia knows this is a mistake. Managing the social platforms for different products under one brand is no different than managing completely different brands. Each product has a unique appeal to your customers that should be maintained and respected.
Instead of focusing on another product’s success or how to appeal to the current hot market of today (i.e. millennials), focus on your product’s audience, their needs, and what appeals to them.
Find what works for your product and leave the rest behind.
In This Episode
- How brand lift studies lead to more cohesive, relevant, and impactful social campaigns
- Why employing social media community managers doesn’t mean they are the first line of engagement on social
- How managing multiple brands means building walls in your head and respecting brand boundaries
- Why gaining a million hits means placing content at the right time, in the right place, for your product
Quotes From This Episode
“Everyone kinda started to realize that we needed more synergies, and even things like cost efficiencies for tools. But also sharing best practices and learnings, because each business unit was at a different stage of their social and digital marketing.” —@ToniaColetta
“There’s no border on the internet, so all the time our Canadian content will end up elsewhere from an earned perspective, and not necessarily distributed by our marketing team in that country. But it’s just being shared by consumers as a great piece of content.” —@ToniaColetta
“It is a challenge to really prove that our content that is shared widely, or liked a whole lot, or is actually making an impact on sales.” —@ToniaColetta
“Brand lift is something that we have found incredibly valuable, and at the end of the campaign we can actually show brand lift that ladders up to the brand brief.” —@ToniaColetta
“We reversed it, so that they see the customer service first, and then they let us know when there’s community engagement pieces that require our community managers to chime in.” —@ToniaColetta
“What I’ve always loved about working and crossing an entire portfolio, is I get the full portfolio view.” —@ToniaColetta
“It’s really understanding the brief from that brand team, who they wanna reach, why they wanna reach them, and creating your objective, and your KPI’s to meet that objective.” —@ToniaColetta
“It’s our job also to help tell them what the strategies are for what period of time.” —@ToniaColetta
“A lot of brands are trying to crack the Millennial target.” —@ToniaColetta
“When I’m counseling our brand groups with our social communications on how we create content and how we target our media, I try to make sure that they focus on what the objective of their campaign is and make sure that they’re creating content that meets the need of that target.” —@ToniaColetta
“When we get stuck on “Are we cool enough for the Millennials”, I find that we’re not creating the content that is actually meeting our objective or delivering the call to action that we want.” —@ToniaColetta
“One Twitter post ultimately ended up leading to a hundred million earned impressions, where people were covering our social content on traditional news at 6 o’clock, because of some social content that we were doing.” —@ToniaColetta
Resources
- Tonia Coletta on Twitter: @ToniaColetta
- Molson Coors Canada on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube
- Coors Light Canada on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
- Coors Side Seat Scavenger Hunt
See you next week!
Transcript
| Jay: | Welcome everybody to Social Pros, the podcast for real people doing real work in social media. I am as always Jay Baer from Convince & Convert, joined as usual by my special Texas friend, from the great city of Austin. He is the executive strategist, don’t you forget it, for Salesforce Marketing Cloud. He is the one, the only, Mr. Adam Brown. |
| Adam: | Jay, what a great introduction. Thank you so much, and you are my special friend everywhere else. I do have a question though. |
| Jay: | Yes. |
| Adam: | I’ve been your special Texas friend for quite some time … |
| Jay: | Yes. |
| Adam: | … and I’m curious if the word “special” … according to the consumer, is like new or improved. Like I can only be special for so long, and now I’m just your common Texas friend. |
| Jay: | Yes, you’re my rudimentary Texas friend. That’s how I’ll introduce you next week. |
| Adam: | Well, there you go. I don’t know if that doesn’t come off the mouth just as easy. |
| Jay: | You know what? I’m a professional. I can handle it. |
| Adam: | Yes. |
| Jay: | You know what else I can handle? Drinking a ton of beer. |
| Adam: | An icicle beverage? |
| Jay: | Drinking a ton of beer. An icicle beverage … We foolishly are not recording this Friday afternoon. We will have to discuss this with our production staff, because we completely drop the ball. We are, however, recording this episode during the day, with a very special guest who has … We’ve had a lot of guests on this show with great jobs, right? |
| Adam: | We have. |
| Jay: | People who have awesome cool gigs, right? I mean, my job is pretty cool, your job is pretty cool, but I mean really cool gigs. And this week’s special guest on Social Pros is at the very top of that list. She is Tonia Coletta, who’s the senior manager of digital marketing for Molson Coors Canada. She is pushing beer like you can not believe. Supersmart, delighted to have her on the show. Tonia thanks for being on Social Pros. |
| Tonia: | Thank you for having me. And it is 5 o’clock somewhere so … |
| Jay: | It is. |
| Adam: | I like that style. |
| Jay: | Let’s see, it is 5 o’clock in London, so let’s just … I mean for all of our UK listeners: “You can go for it!”. So you have been with Molson Coors in Canada, and you’re in Toronto, right? And you’ve been there for a long time, you’ve been with the organization for several years. |
| Tonia: | Yes. Almost … actually just past nine years. So I’ve- |
| Adam: | Wow. |
| Tonia: | … I’ve seen a lot of social evolvement over these years, so it’s been a great time. And you can imagine why I’m still here, because beer is the best. |
| Jay: | Is your whole team located in the same place, are you guys are all together more or less in the office, or you spread out throughout Canada? |
| Tonia: | We are all in Toronto. It’s our corporate headquarters. We do work with some of our sales groups across the country, but yes, our entire digital team is headquartered in Toronto. |
| Jay: | And you support all the brands, and maybe it would be good to just have you set the stage, let listeners know all the different brands that you have. You don’t have to name them all, we’re not saying: “What do you have on draft?”, but just kind of give people a sense of the scope and scale of Molson Coors Canada. Because I’m not sure people totally understand it. |
| Tonia: | Yes, you bet. So we support the entire portfolio. With that being said, we have the strategic brands that we work on regularly, and then we’ll support other brands on occasion, based on campaigns. But most people are familiar with the Molson Canadians and Coors Lights of the world. We have craft portfolio, that involves Rickard’s brands, Creemore Springs, which is a small craft brewery in Ontario. We have partner brands that we work with, that we distribute in Canada. That’s your Heineken, your Strongbow. We just recently finished a business merge here, so we now support the Miller portfolio, MTD, and Miller Light. See? We’ve got a lot on our plate. Coors Banquet, which is a big one in the US as well, that we work on here in Canada. It’s a pretty fun job, because everyday I work on something different. |
| Jay: | You know, there and then parallel teams, or … I wouldn’t say they are parallel teams, but other teams that are at the brand level, only working on Rickard’s for example, and then you and your team are working on everything. How does that work? |
| Tonia: | Yes. So we have our brand groups, our brand marketing teams, where they work on everything including digital and social. But our team supports the day to day strategy, plus the community management and publishing, and insights, and analytics. So within my group, we have community managers that are spread across the portfolios. I work on the overarching strategy, and media and integration. And then, within my group, we have a community manager that works on the Coors portfolio, one that works on the Canadian portfolio, and so on, to split up the work. |
| Jay: | And how do you interact with your peers, or partners globally? Obviously Molson Coors has a massive Canadian presence, but of course a large US presence, and increasingly Europe and South America, and everywhere else. So is there a global center of excellence that you participate in? Or how do you hang out with your cousins to the South and beyond? |
| Tonia: | Yes. So it’s great. We do have a global leadership team in digital now, headed up by AVP of digital in Denver. That’s recent for us, that role is recently built into the company, as everyone kinda started to realize that we needed more synergies, and even things like cost efficiencies for tools. But then, also sharing best practices and learnings, because each business unit was at a different stage of their social and digital marketing. A couple of years ago we started a social media global counsel, and I represent Canada. And we meet over the phone, I wish we met globally and personal regularly but … We discuss best practices, programs we’re working on, challenges, usually monthly. Monthly is when we try to get together. |
| Jay: | Is there a fair amount of content that is shared globally? So it may be a similar Facebook post in the US versus Canada and versus Europe or A-Pac, or is it really country by country, at an individual piece of social content level. Those kind of variances. |
| Tonia: | It’s still pretty country by country. Often because our target, or our drinkers are at a very different stage down the path of purchase, or the different target that it just works for that content. We do share a bit for global brands, like Coors Light. We do work a bit with the US for Molson Canadian now, just as we’re starting to see the content working across the borders. I mean, there’s no border on the internet, so all the time our Canadian content will end up from an earn perspective elsewhere, and not necessarily distributed by our marketing team in that country. But it’s just being shared by consumers as a great piece of content. The global group is … Yes, we’re working on that to see how we can better share assets. |
| Jay: | One of the things that we’ve talked about on this show, in the last few months, and it’s actually the topic of the session that I’m leading at Social Media Marketing World Conference next month in San Diego, is the in the digital and social team composition and structure. Now that social has gotten more multimedia oriented, now that you have general proliferation, now that you’ve got a lot of paid, whereas before you didn’t have as much paid. What we’re seeing on the consultant side, is brands like yours, and managers like you, having to reorganize their people, and get different kinds of people on their team. Have you experienced that as well? |
| Tonia: | Yes. Great question. We just experienced that last fall. We restructured our digital team. Before, my team focused a lot on the social side. We still do that, that’s our primary focus, but now we’ve added a media manager to our digital team. We have a director of e-commerce, and we have a social media analyst. So we recognize that too, and we’ve started to build our digital team to have that specialty within our group, as well. Naturally, a lot of those things still fall within the brand team, but to have that center of excellence to make sure that it’s integrating across all the brands was key. And we took the steps to do that, a couple months ago, I guess. |
| Jay: | One of the things that you had mentioned to us off-air, is that in terms of identifying the impact of social on beer sales … you know there is no e-commerce for beer, unfortunately. Let’s work on that. |
| Tonia: | We will one day. |
| Jay: | Agree, yes, someday. If there was any righteousness in the world that would be available. But because you don’t have really an e-commerce environment … and of course you’re sold at retail in an infinite number of places, or a near infinite, that in order to measure the impact of social, you actually do some brand lift studies. Most of the people who are on the show don’t do that, either because they don’t need to, they’ve got more of a direct path to purchase, or they just don’t wanna invest in … I would love for you so spend some time talking about how you do that, and what you learn from it. |
| Tonia: | Yes, absolutely. I mean, it is a challenge to really prove that our content that is shared widely, or liked a whole lot, or I’m getting positive feedback, is actually making an impact on sales. So we’ve really invested in brand lift studies, particularly for our Facebook’s and Instagram’s as priority, where we’re ensuring that we meet the reach we need to activate a study that we can track back at recall, purchase, intent and favorability with those who saw our content. It’s pretty much a mandate now, that we execute one for every campaign. Naturally there’s a bit of a media spent cap with those, so we try. That’s something that everyone needs to recognize when they wanna do these. But it’s nice, because then we tap into our insights group that we have here, as well in Canada, and they help us build out the questions, to make sure that we’re matching them to their brand health tracking scores, with our above the line communications as well. It’s something that my team executes in-house. We work with our great partners at Facebook, and of course our media agency as well. But our social analyst is actually the one in-house doing it, so we can see the results and read real-time how people are responding to the communications. We do A-B testing with the different pieces of content as well, and look at which one has performed better, and then put the rest of the money onto that side. It’s something that we have found incredibly valuable, and at the end of the campaign we can actually show brand lift that ladders up to the brand brief that we were … we were giving up to be ending up the campaign. It’s pretty awesome. I love it. It’s something that we’ve been wanting to do for years, and now we execute regularly. |
| Jay: | Is the website, and those kind of dot CA properties, is that part of your purview as well? |
| Tonia: | It is, to a degree. But I will tell you, with having a legal drinking age gate on a website, really hits your web traffic pretty hard so … |
| Jay: | Yes. Exactly. It has surely an effect on the … |
| Tonia: | Exactly. It’s not a focus in our communications. |
| Jay: | Yes. It’s funny, that was my question. Was going to be … you’ve been doing this now for eight or nine years. Well, I guess the age gate pre-dates you joining the company, but would you say the website is more or less important to the company now, that it was when you joined? |
| Tonia: | Much less. Yes. We still have to use it to host things like rules and regulations for promotions and stuff. And we have added in some technology to try and mage an age gate simpler, a nicer process for the consumer. But we’ll focus onto our social channels to drive traffic, to get information, or to see promos, contests. But yes. There’s still a purpose for them when necessary. |
| Jay: | Off-air you mentioned that your social media customer service team, is now part of customer service, right? So they’re now part of the individuals who presumably are also answering the phone, and answering e-mails. Can you talk about why that conclusion was reached, and sort of how they operated before they became part of customer service? |
| Tonia: | Absolutely. Community engagement was my priority and my role for about two years before I moved into the more digital and content side. But I let that part of the business for about five years, evolving from myself and one other. I’m just sitting there answering anything and everything, and getting a complaint about a broken beer bottle, and a beer case, and me personally dealing with it, and finding a beer voucher to replace it and send it out. So we are doing everything, from customer service to brand marketing community engagement. Over the years as volume grew, and we started doing paid media, and just our portfolio grew with brands that wanted in on social, we recognized that we needed a different solution. And also involving a 24/7 moderation, because of the business we’re in. We couldn’t have things sitting on our page for X amount of time. We needed 24 hour moderation to manage those risks. We onboarded a moderation agency, we hired more community managers. And up until only last year, it all fell within our digital team. And then we realized about 50% of our inquiries coming in were customer service driven anyways, and we were just shipping them off to the customer service team, through our social management tool. Then they’d take over. We realized these guys know our business as well as us, our customer service team. Let’s make them first point of contact, so that they are seeing everything come in. And then we kind of reversed it, so that they see the customer service first, and then they let us know when there’s community engagement pieces that require our community managers to chime in. So whether it’s a fun comment around hokey, or “I love your brand program”, those are still my group answering them. We kind of flipped it on its head. |
| Adam: | Tonia, I can’t agree more with that philosophy of empowering really the subject matter experts. In this case, your customer service representatives to be able to answer those questions. Great strategy there. One thing that really fascinates me, is how marketers like you are able to work on messaging and strategy, for so many different brands. I think whether you’re at a CPG company, where you’ve got five detergent brands, that all have slightly different audiences, or even like the time I spent at Coca-Cola, where we had a couple hundred brands. My question for you is: how do you work with the teams to develop and nurture digital brands? For certainly three beer brands, but the target audience, even the technologies you may use to reach the consumers for a Molson versus a Coors Light versus a Killian’s Red, could be quite different. I’m interested in how you work in that space. |
| Tonia: | It’s a great question. Some days it can be very overwhelming, but we have such a solid group of agencies that help us manage this, in addition to our brand marketers, and then my group. And the beauty … what I’ve always loved about working and crossing an entire portfolio, is I get the full portfolio view. So I know when Coors Light is executing X program, at X target group, versus Miller Light, which you know their consumer target might be very similar. So I can help manage that to kind of ensure the brands understand what the other groups are doing, in case they’re not talking. So that’s what I do love about it. I mean, it is quite challenging though to ensure that the strategy you’re building for Coors Light and the strategy you’re building with Canadian, are build for that brand and that persona, and that target. And you have a great idea, and you’re like: “Oh, can this work for the other brand too?”, and you’re like: “Wait, wait, wait. That’s for totally different target”. So it’s … I just try to put on a different hat whenever I’m going into the next room, and I just try to put aside everything else that I’ve been working on, and focus on that brand, because it deserves the attention, and its own plan. I guess it’s hard to answer, but I really have to remember that when I go into a different brand meeting, if I just came out from something else, and have learning from the insights room from the Molson Canadian. I don’t just want to say: “Well, this is what Molson Canadian is doing, is working at this because X,Y,Z”. It’s really understanding the brief from that brand team, who they wanna reach, why they wanna reach them, and creating your objective, and your KPI’s to meet that objective. |
| Adam: | Do you ever find that you’re creating programs that maybe cannibalizing yourself? I mean, you maybe you’re having one program competing with another? I mean, on your wall in your office, do you have a list of “Here are all our brands”, “Here’s the target audiences”, and “Here are the programs”, to make sure that you’re not compromising one brand to benefit another. |
| Tonia: | We do. We have to most ridiculous calendar ever, that shows all the brand programs and we’re talking … it’s above the like campaigns. But then also through social, we’re doing a lot of value adding communications too, with pricing and sales in different regions, so making sure we’re balancing all that and not overwhelming the consumer. We have our reach and frequency targets of how often we think they need to see our social content, to equal X impact. It’s our job also to help, and along with our senior manager to tell us what the strategies are for what period of time. Canada Day, Molsen Canadian it’s a pretty important brand for that time of year, so our focus is gonna be on that, and that may have to trump, or push back timelines for other content, or advertising. |
| Adam: | One of the things you mentioned in speaking with Jay, is how you’re doing some brand lift studies, and like. Because so much of what you do, is kind of around that. That inherit brand value. My question is … and I think this is one of the challenge all of us in social media have had, is that typically when you measure brand lift by last click attribution, typically social gets kind of the short end of the stick, there. Because, usually it’s not a Tweet, or a post that is driving some sort of purchase. Now with beer, it may be very different. Last click attribution may be very much social. So my question is, as you look at brand lift, and the reporting, are you looking at it by platform, and are you able to actually articulate: “Yes! Social was the last click”, or had a huge impact on this versus other digital media or marketing? |
| Tonia: | It’s a great question. Most of our brand lift studies are on Facebook right now. Depending on what the questions are, you have the lower funnel questions, which are really about purchase and intent, and that. But we really do try to focus on the middle, which is more about, well I guess “ad” we call at the beginning. But then, do you recall seeing an ad for Molsen Canadian, but also do you recall seeing an ad about hockey. Or if you are drinking beer, what beer would you choose while you’re watching hokey. And then we’ll put our competitors in there. I find that it’s a pretty hard question to answer, because there’s so many other things going on among digital advertising, and then also what we have on the grounds of … I’m sorry, I don’t have the best answer for that question. |
| Adam: | No, I think that’s insightful, and I can completely understand. This is such a complex category, and in any of your brands at the Molson Coors portfolio, have to be … Again, spending tens if not hundreds of million of dollars on every single media and medium, traditional or nontraditional digital paid, earned. It’s extremely complicated, so kudos to you and your team for what you’re doing. I know you’ve had quite a couple of really successful programs that you told us off-air that you are excited about. I’d love if you could talk a little bit about the Coors Side Seat scavenger hunt promotion that you ran a while ago. That sounds like such an interesting program. |
| Tonia: | Yes, it’s still running. In Toronto, Coors Light … or I guess in Canada as well. Coors Light is the official beer of the Toronto Raptors, which is very exciting for us. And we have these beautiful silver colored courtside seats, as part of our sponsorship. So the brand team had an opportunity to use those through social contesting, to fill those seats. The community manager on my team, Andre, she came up with this idea in-house on her own, about calling them “courtside seats” and doing a scavenger hunt on Snapchat, where we’d send out a Snap with a picture kind of showing where we were in Toronto, and basically saying: “First people who come seat in these seats, and follow us on Snapchat, gets to sit courtside, that night at the Raptor’s game”. So hot-ticket. It’s not very often you get to sit courtside at the Raptor’s, and they’re doing pretty well this season, so it’s got a lot of attention in Toronto. We’ve executed it, I think four times so far, and within minutes people were running up to the seats, to get them. And we’re hiding in … Pretty hard to get to locations in Toronto. So it’s pretty cool to see while Snapchat … measurement within Snapchat is a bit more difficult still, as they develop their adds platform, or their analytics platforms. But we obviously saw that people were sitting there waiting for us to send out that clue, and were there so quickly to get the seats. |
| Adam: | I think that’s a hallmark of a successful program, where you’ve got people waiting, literally, to participate in it. I’m gonna assume, and you can correct me here, that if you’re doing things on Snapchat, we’re talking probably about the Coors Light brand, perhaps maybe younger beer drinkers, maybe even Millennials. I’m curious if you found that Millennials are a harder audience to market to, or with. And are there any tips that you have learned in talking to younger consumers, that our audience might be interested, and be able to learn from? |
| Tonia: | Yes. I think a lot of brands are tying to crack the Millennial target. We certainly have been talking about the term “Millennial” for years now. Coors Light is certainly a brand that targets that demo, because of the type of brand persona that it has. But ultimately, at least with my team, and when I’m counseling our brand groups with our social communications, and how we create content, and how we target our media has been, I try to make sure that they focus on what the objective of their campaign is, and make sure that they’re creating content that meets the need of that target. So whether it’s Millennial, whether it’s a big overarching campaign that we just want everyone to drink the beer. We’re really just trying to focus on that now, because when we get stuck on “Are we cool enough for the Millennials”, I find that we’re not really creating the content that actually is meeting our objective, and delivering the call to action that we want, or the action out of it, which is typically: we want them to drink beer. Yes, we’re just really trying to focus on … Well, we wanna be cool, but really delivering what that targets want, based on insights and feedback, and every day commentary from our social channels. We take that seriously, and we measure it regularly, every month, to see what they’re saying about us, so … |
| Adam: | Well, I think that’s a key to successful marketing today to any audience, but I think Millennials in particular. That is making sure there is that circle, that loop of continuous improvement feedback. Listening to what your consumers are saying about you and your brand, and even your competitor brand, and in taking that information into consideration. Tonia, I’ve got one last question before- |
| Tonia: | Sure. |
| Adam: | … I hand it back over to Jay. And this is kind of a fun question. I know, back from the old days in television ads, that you’re not allowed to show someone actually drinking a beer. At least in the United States. You can show the mug, the frosty mug going up to the lips, you can show it in the hand, but you can’t show them drinking. My question for you is: is that still true, and are there any other kind of funny regulations like that, in the social media space, beyond the age gating that you mentioned before, that you have to be cognizant of … that someone who’s trying to sell calculators, or widgets online, wouldn’t have to really be familiar with. |
| Tonia: | Oh, yes there is. It’s still true. Yes, there’s a ton of regulations. Molson Coors Globally … we actually IRS. We signed onto the digital guiding principles for Alt-Bev industry, where we’ve all agreed to abide by regulations, and enforce them as best as we can. One thing being you can’t drink, but also in an image, or a video, we need to show that the beer is full. So we’re not showing that they’ve been consuming. One beer per one person within an image or a video, so one person can’t hold two beers, that’s inducement. So tons of rules and regulations around that, as well as activity that you can’t be doing, certain activities while drinking beer, because that’s dangerous. There’s so many rules. Luckily being here for so long in this company, I know most of them and I can catch things pretty quickly, which actually helps a lot through our creative process. They often invite me at the very beginning to make sure we can do things. Which is good for me, but probably bad for them, because I have to say “no” to a lot of things. But yes, it can be incredibly challenging. We have a really great legal team in-house here, that is still willing to work with my group on social channels. Sometimes keeps us from doing certain things, like a Snapchat. We just started to do ads and stuff, because now the age can age gate ads, but they’re so willing to work with us and find ways around it so we can still meet our goals, and still be innovative in new channels. And yes, really excite people about beer. |
| Adam: | Do you have a legal council that is assigned to your team? Are there marketing lawyers, or digital marketing lawyers who are set on one legal pool, inside the organization, and you have to kind of get with them and explain the whole “Okay, let me give you a handle on Snapchat”, and do that every time. |
| Tonia: | We do have a couple of marketing specific lawyers that help with everything, from innovation and then anytime … few of them have been here as long as I have. So it’s great for a relationship, for me, and anytime I have … |
| Adam: | Yes. |
| Tonia: | … Snapchat, or Twitter, or Facebook, coming to give our team their latest updates, or changes, I invite the legal team. I’d rather have them in from the beginning so they understand it, and understand the opportunity, and who can help us work through challenges or setbacks we might have. It’s great. I would rather bring them in at the beginning versus having to do something and then find our it’s wrong, and then they won’t answer my calls … |
| Adam: | And to stop. |
| Tonia: | … quite frankly. |
| Adam: | Right. Yes. |
| Tonia: | Yes. |
| Adam: | What’s one thing that you haven’t done yet, either because you just haven’t gotten to it, or from a regulatory perspective, that you really want to dig in. What’s your next dream, thing? |
| Tonia: | It’s a great question. Live streaming is something that we’ve started to dabble in, but it’s in a very controlled environment, because of being a regulated industry. I would love to do more Facebook live, I would love to do more Snapchat stories on the fly. But just because you can’t control what might pop into the back of … |
| Adam: | Yes. |
| Tonia: | … the scene at a Coors Light party, or something. So we’ve done a few. We’ve announced some winners for contests with a program live, but very controlled scenario. So that’s something I’m really eager to do more in, because of the popularity that it has. But that’s the one we’re everyone’s kind of like “Ugh”… |
| Adam: | Yes. I understand. |
| Tonia: | That’s my only dream, to move forward in this- |
| Adam: | That’s a great answer. |
| Tonia: | Yes. |
| Jay: | How do you feel about podcast sponsorships, because, you know … Just saying. Adam and I can drink a different beer, during the show, every week, and promote that brand. We’d be happy to do that for you. |
| Adam: | I think that’s a great idea. |
| Tonia: | I think I could easily get some beer brought over to you guys. I don’t that would be a problem. |
| Jay: | I would think so. I would think so. You know, I’m in Toronto for a bit and actually, it’s a true story, fun fact: my daughter just got a scholarship to go to the University of Toronto. |
| Tonia: | Great. |
| Jay: | And she is a marketing incomes devotee, and runs Snapchat for some companies. Actually did a lot of social work for Etsy in Canada, this summer as an intern. And so, she’s gonna be looking for an internship if she goes to the University of Toronto. So I will be calling you, if in fact … |
| Adam: | Congratulations to her. |
| Tonia: | No problem! That’s awesome! UT is great. |
| Adam: | It’s like … you don’t wanna … |
| Jay: | Yes. We’ll see if she goes up there or stays here in The States, but we’ll see. We should find out in a couple of weeks, so I’ll keep you posted. I’m also gonna keep you, ladies and gentleman, Social Pros listeners, posted about our fantastic sponsors who include Yext, the leaders in mobile marketing. Now these guys are so smart. So much of what we do now, we’re trying to figure out where to go and what to do. We are using a mobile phone to do that, and we look it up, and we’re tying to say: “Okay, where is this business”, and “Are they open” and “What’s their story”. And so much of that now, is driven by mobile search, right? And so, it’s all now intertwined in a way that it didn’t used to be. Your mobile search listings, your data, and your ratings and reviews. It’s all tied together, so Yext have a fantastic software platform to help you keep all that straight. But before we get into that, they’ve got a great new Whitepaper, that talks about how mobile is the new frontier in search, and how search is impacted by ratings and reviews. Go to:offers.yext.com/locationworld. That’s: offers.yext.com/locationworld to download that for free. And next we have a brand new e-book from Yext, that I actually wrote. So we’ll be looking for that, and I’ll tell you how to get that next week. Also, the shows is brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, who know a little something about Adam Brown. So we’ve talked a little bit about paid today. Tonia and her team are doing a lot of paid social, as many of us are. And sometimes we’re wondering well, okay, what’s a good click-through rate on a Facebook ad these days, and does Facebook click-through rate differ in the US versus Brazil? What about the Facebook click-through rate versus a Google SAM click-through rate et cetera. So our friend in Salesforce Marketing Cloud put together a really interesting research project, called “The future od ads”, which answers all these questions. What’s a good CTR, compared of CTR by country, by industry, how to increase and improve your ads spend rate of return, using CRM data, so bolting your CRM to your Facebook adds, those kind of things. Lookalike campaigns, re engagement campaigns, case studies, really heavy stuff. Check it out. Go to: bitly/salesforceads. That’s bitly/salesforceads, all lower case. Adam, back to you. |
| Adam: | Jay, thank you. And Tonia Coletta, senior manager for digital marketing at one of the coolest companies in the world, Molson Coors Canada. So great to have you on the show, as well. One of the things Tonia, you mentioned during the open, is that you had been with Molson Coors, or Molson, for almost a decade. And that’s commendable in one way. I think it also shows kind of the longevity of not only your talents, but the space that we live in. My question for you is, as you’ve kind of moved and gotten promoted throughout the organization, how has everybody else’s impressions of social changed, and how have you kind of made sure that you’ve been in the right place at the right time. Can you capitalize upon those opportunities, professionally as well as personally. |
| Tonia: | Yes. Absolutely. Molson is such a great company, one for the product, I love to be passionate about the product that I work on. But, it also has a great culture. When I started, I was literally an intern at a school, it was an internship that I got, and a guy named Fergie Devons, who’s our VP of corporate affairs at that time, hired me to work on social media. And at that point, it was- |
| Adam: | “What’s social media?”. |
| Tonia: | … Yes, exactly. I think Twitter just had launched. And I had been doing another internship at a charity, and I was using Facebook groups to help with fundraising. And I think that’s what got me in the door at Molson, because they’re like: “Oh, this girl knows social media”. I was like: “Yes, I do. I know Facebook groups”. So I was lucky enough to literally come in right when this new way of communicating was starting. And people looked at me, this intern out of PR school, that “Well, she knows what she’s doing”. So I just kind of got to take it and run with it. Which meant that as it evolved, I evolved with it, and people continually looked at me as an in-house expert, along with my VP who was a huge champion of social, which is … probably wasn’t happening in a lot of organizations a decade ago, to have someone at that senior level, really believing in what this was. He took me along the ride and, it moved from corporate affairs, over to marketing, and then digital marketing, underneath media. The group has moved so many places, but I’ve moved along with it, and had been able to provide that history of what we’ve done in the business, integrated with our CRM group, where we had an e-mail marketing team. It’s been an amazing experience for me. I think I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, with just a little bit of Facebook group knowledge at that point. So professionally, within Molson, I think it’s been great that they believed in me to move along the social business, and seen me as a leader. But then, also for me personally, it’s pretty awesome to get to build social media within one business, over the course of a decade. Like I’ve just learned so much, and I just know the people to get things done, and it’s been an amazing ride. And it’s not ending yet. |
| Adam: | I think that’s the most exciting thing about what we do. I think it shows your tenacity of being able to move quickly, back and forth. You mentioned kind of starting with a PR background, public relations background. I’m kind of included in that category as well. So curious how you’ve seen that evolution, of what social media is, kind of going from an earned media type environment now, to more of a paid call to action type of environment. And maybe, if you put your thinking cap on … and then, one of the thing you mentioned with Jay is looking at Facebook live, certainly Snapchat, and Snap adds. Where do you see al this kind of going, and where would you wanna kind of take your career in that particular direction, at Molson Coors? |
| Tonia: | Yes, it changed so much. It’s so interesting because, at one point I worked on the PR team, led social, and now I work in the marketing group under the media director, and lead social. So it’s flipped on its head so many times, but ultimately, everything needs to work together. PR was such an important piece at very beginning, because … I mean you’re still communicating, you need to still communicate well, and concise, and have good grammar. You still need to have all those things, even though at the same time I write “lol” and “brb” to you guys before we started today, but … |
| Adam: | It’s okay. |
| Tonia: | It’s such an important piece. And then a lot of our paid media eventually turns into earns. So one Twitter post can … I mean we had that this happen at the Olympics a couple of years ago. One Twitter post ultimately ended up leading to a hundred million earned impressions, where people were covering our social content on traditional news at 6 o’clock, because of some social content that we were doing. So all of the teams had to work together. For me, I want to keep working in all of it. And I see myself as a connector, and hopefully be able to continue to integrate the three groups. Where will I go next? I don’t know, but I love change, and I love taking risk, and I love innovation, so I will happily go where the excitement is. And the challenges, I like a challenge. |
| Jay: | Are you ever just sitting there and thinking: “Man, I would really just like a glass of wine”. |
| Tonia: | Shh, don’t tell, but yes. |
| Jay: | Okay, you have access to dozens of beers, and you guys have like beer in the office. So what is your go-to, what is your favorite? I mean, this is an important question for a Canadian in particular. |
| Tonia: | It is. Beer … I am a Coors Light drinker. I like a light beer, that it’s cold and refreshing. I do enjoy Molson Canadian here and there. It’s one of the best lagers out there, in my opinion. But I am … we also mix ciders, and I love ciders. I’m a big fan of ciders. We have a Molson Canadian cider now, we also distribute Strongbow, and I just find them so refreshing, and different. And also for those who might have gluten issues, it’s a great option. |
| Jay: | Yes. Yes, good call. Look at that … Look at her staying on brand. She’s so good. Love it. I’m gonna ask you the two questions, briefly that we ask every single guest here, now 6 years into the Social Pros podcast. Question number one: what one tip would you give somebody who’s looking to become a social pro? |
| Tonia: | Kind of shows what I have said before, that I like a challenge, so my tip is: be willing to test and try new things, if possible, within your role, if you have that ability. And then be excited to fail. Because I think if you haven’t failed at least once, you’re probably not trying hard enough. I try to tell that to my team, I try to think of that with myself. And as long as you have that environment, and that management, or your team who are willing to allow you to do that to learn … I think that’s one of the best pieces of advice I was ever given, is “Well, Tonia, you haven’t failed yet, so you’re obviously not trying hard enough” so I’m like “Oh, all right”. That to me always stands out when we’re looking at new things to try in social, or something that makes me bit nervous. |
| Jay: | I love how you phrase that. Not just be okay to fail, but be excited to fail. |
| Adam: | Yes. |
| Jay: | I love that. That is very profound. I’m gonna think about that today. You should do that too, Social Pros listeners, that’s a very interesting concept, that I wanna roll around with a little bit this evening. Coming last question for you … Yes that’s great. Thank you so much and I really appreciate your time on the podcast, and congratulations on all the great work. Adam and I will be expecting our first shipment and the sponsorship check here, in a couple of days. Meanwhile, let me ask you the final question that we ask everybody on this show. If you could do a Skype call with any living person, who would it be, and why? |
| Tonia: | Okay, this is very hard for me to decide. And I do have two, I hope that’s okay. |
| Jay: | Sure, yes. We’ll let you do it. We can always cut one out. |
| Tonia: | Okay. I’ll send you more beer for two. The first one is, actually J.K.Rowling. I think she’s an incredible storyteller, which everyone knows that from her Harry Potter series. But I also … just the width and cleverness that she has on her Twitter. I find her fascinating, in just how smart she is, and her view on the world, and life. I just think she’s fantastic, and I would love to spend some time talking to her. And then, I’m a recent new mom, and I adore- |
| Adam: | Congratulations. |
| Tonia: | … Chrissy Teigan, on social media. One because she loves food, but also I find her such a true authentic person to her personal brand and the way she- |
| Jay: | She’s cool a.f. right? |
| Tonia: | She’s beautiful, that’s great as in, it’s always nice to look at beautiful people. But she’s … I just find her incredible, and just love how she- |
| Jay: | How does John Legend’s…? Like, let’s shift- |
| Tonia: | I had totally- |
| Jay: | … and have a beer, right? |
| Tonia: | Yes. |
| Jay: | Talk about people who are at the very, very top of their profession, but … I mean, who knows, maybe they’re terrible in person. But by all accounts, seeing really cool … I mean and it hasn’t gone to their head and man, that’s inspiring. |
| Tonia: | Yes, I adore them. And they’re daughter is so cute. So … |
| Jay: | That’s a good choice. |
| Tonia: | Thanks. |
| Jay: | You’ve got all kinds of run over there at Molson Coors. I’m sure you can find out some sort of deal that you could do with Chrissy Teigan. You’ve been to the Olympics twice, you’ve got all kinds of run over there. I mean you could concoct a promotion with her, I’m sure. |
| Tonia: | Well, you know in Canada we can’t work with celebs. It’s one of those other rules. I’m gonna have to come to The States, all that. I know. Which is another interesting thing, when you think about social media influencers, and what defines a celebrity as an influencer- |
| Jay: | Yes. Right, right- |
| Tonia: | That’s a whole … yeah. |
| Jay: | Is there a set number of Instagram influencers that now make you a celebrity? How do you define that? |
| Tonia: | There isn’t really a definition legally, and I mean that’s why I work with our legal team regularly, when I’m like “Okay, this is who we wanna work with. What do you think?”. So yes, that’s a whole other- |
| Jay: | Interesting. |
| Tonia: | … conversation we could have down the road too. Yes. |
| Jay: | We should do a Whitepaper on that. Like, what defines a celebrity in Canada. It would be really cool, to start leadership project. |
| Tonia: | Yes. In the meantime, I’m gonna have to go to The States- |
| Jay: | Adam, how does it get for you guys to work on? That would be good for Adam. |
| Adam: | No, I like that. I’m curious whether or not, the way you determine whether someone is a celebrity, is the same metrics you use to determine when they are not a celebrity. Because if you’re gonna be authentic, you want it to be the same metric, but that would- |
| Jay: | Yeah. |
| Adam: | … seem to eliminate a lot of potential. |
| Jay: | I think it’s like pornography: you know it when you see it. |
| Adam: | Good. Good rationalization. |
| Jay: | Right? Exactly. |
| Adam: | I think. |
| Jay: | Tonia Coletta, thank you so much for being on the program. We loved having you. Congratulations on all the success, “Go Canada!”. Hopefully I will see you up in Toronto at some point. Adam, that you, as always. We’re a fine, fine show thanks for our sponsors and most of all, thanks to you for listening to Social Pros each and every week. Adam and I love all of you. Don’t forget, send us a note if you can, Jay@JayBaer.com, that’s my real e-mail address. Let us know who you are, and what you’re doing, what you’re listening to. Love talking to you guys, and we will see you next week, on Social Pros. |
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