[MUSIC] So hi Tressie, please tell us a little bit about you, and in particular the role you played at Yum Brands in helping grow social media. >> Sure, I currently lead the Digital Innovation and On Demand Team. So my team is thinking about how do we re-imagine the experience for our customers, for our employees, through the great evolution of technology. So how are we gonna use that to think about the way someone orders their food, they pick up their food, or how they access the brand through new areas like delivery. But I've been at Taco Bel for about three and a half years, and a huge part of my job when I started, was building a social strategy. And starting to evolve how we created real two way conversations with our customers. And so I'm really excited about the work we've done in a way that we have been able to really build a true friendship with our community >> Talk about the evolution, where it started and where you started in the process, and how that evolution has continue to unfold. >> Sure. >> Well if you think about social media, I don't think that brands have a choice about showing up in social media. Especially a brand like Taco Bell, where our core consumers are millennials. And if we're going to be there, we have to be the best, you know. We really wanted to lead the way. And so when I came in, what we noticed was that we had passionate fans, so if you went to our Facebook wall, people were doing things like posting a picture of themselves with a Taco Bell tattoo. Or they were actually shaving the logo into their head. And coming from the outside in, I thought this is spectacular, I mean, this is gold. I can't believe that we have fans that are this passionate about our brand. And really at the level of something like Apple that you would expect. But Taco Bell was really driving this great cult, this amazing community of people who loved it. And we weren't tapping into that with the content we were creating. We are essentially taking advertising, and we were posting it on our page, we had legal copy. We had very long descriptions, and we were selling. We were completely selling our community. So, we flipped that on its head and said, we need to really be engaging as a friend. We wanna be authentic, and real, and show our passion to our fans. >> Was there a pivot point that caused you to get that that's what you really needed to do? >> Well, early on when we decided to just go for it, right, a lot of it was just testing and learning, so we thought, hey why don't we create real pictures. The type of pictures and photos, and copy that our fans are actually posting. And when we did that we saw a huge shift in engagement. Now automatically you start to see the likes go up. You see the comments and the shares go up, and so we knew we were on to something. And then it was just a matter of experimenting, posting new things every day. And continuing to listen and evolve, as we got more feedback from the community. >> At what point did you start to be challenged to prove the investments that you are continuing to make in social media, in business results. >> We have an amazing community manager named Joslyn Rush, and early on she saw this Tweet from Old Spice, and it said, is fire sauce made with real fire? >> It didn't even talk about Taco Bell but she was listening, she was seeing what was happening in culture. And she just responded and said, at Old Spice is your deodorant made with really old spices? The next thing you know the simple tweet has created a Twitter storm. Everybody's talking about the feud happening between Old Spice and Taco Bell. And that really got our name into pop culture. And so from that, we were able to show the organization the power of a single tweet, when done well, when it's authentic, and in your brand voice, the impact that it can have. And so, we just continued to look for opportunities to be apart of culture, to build the brand, and to create new content that would be unexpected and that would break through in a very crowded space. >> So there's been a fair amount written about the way in which you think about social media, but how would you distill it down to the primary goal it's trying to achieve? >> For us, it's really been about creating a relationship. I think a lot of people think about it as a sales tool, and it certainly can be a sales driver. But what we did was think about how to build a relationship first. How to be authentic. And when we're thinking about it as being a friend, if you're a friend you're not gonna go to someone and say hey, buy this, right. You build a relationship over time and then when you tell your friends something's cool, they listen to you, because you have a relationship and a trust that's been established. So we wanted to develop that first, and then from there, we do talk to people about things that are going on, cuz they are excited about our food. So when we let them know about a new product or something new, a technology like our mobile ordering app. When we let them know about it first, they will definitely champion that, because they love the brand and because we have that relationship. >> So in October of 14, you did something pretty radical, which is you shut down your engagement platforms for a day or two and launched your mobile app. So, now that you look back almost a year later, how would you describe that as a strategy and advice for others, around a strategy really quite that bold. >> It definitely was bold, and working in social media, I actually feel uncomfortable if I haven't felt uncomfortable in awhile. We constantly want to feel that tension of thinking is this a good idea? Because you don't really know what's going to break through. But what we did know is that we had a very established community that loved to engage with us on Twitter. And then we felt would genuinely miss us, if we disappeared. And rather than just create content to say hey we have a new mobile app, we wanted to do it in a unexpected wa,y and in a uniquely Taco Bell way. I think we really talk a lot about doing things that are only right for our brand. If you could replace the work with another logo. Or another product, and it still made sense, it's probably not right for Taco Bell. So we really want it to be unique to us. And with that, when we took over Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and said the new way to Taco Bell isn't on that channel, it's only in the app with a link, we went from number thirteen hundred in the app store, where people really weren't downloading our old app. To moving up to the top 23 apps, within twelve hours. So we saw the community rally behind us. And going to your earlier question about the organization investing in social, the more that you can demonstrate that we have this community that they have our back. And they do care about us, and they're showing that by taking actions like they did by downloading the app. It goes a long way to continuing to drive momentum for the brand. >> You weren't worried at all that the app would be seen as oh, finally they're gonna be selling us? >> Not at all, because the app itself was inspired by our social community. So the minute you open it, it feels like we've been able to take that friendship to the next level. So all of the images in the app are inspired by what we see on Instagram every day. The photos that we created for social, they don't look perfect. They look like the food that you get, and that you crave. And you want to enjoy. We now could greet you by your name. So you can log in through Facebook, and we can say welcome back Tom. And start to create that relationship, and people love our food. I mean people often tweeted at the beginning and still do. They'd say what a great time to be alive. I can order Taco Bell through my app. Or I'm laying and just looking at the screen just thinking about what I'm gonna order at Taco Bell, because I love to engage with the brand. So we felt like we knew our community well enough. And I think that's a huge advantage of being in social, is that you really get the consumers. Because you're listening to their conversations, everyday. You're really hearing what they love about the brand, and what the opportunities are. And you're able to take that feedback, and continue to change and evolve, and build new products, and build new ways to connect with that community. [MUSIC]
