This past Tuesday, AMA had the wonderful pleasure of getting to hear the marketing experience from Tiff Treats’ VP of Experiential Marketing: Samantha Fodrowski.
Her Story:
Samantha attended Northeastern University for both her undergrad and masters where she earned degrees in Journalism and Digital Media. Since then, she has worked for multiple companies acquainting herself with all the aspects of marketing. She started with Lucky Magazine as an Event Producer where she was able to learn Influencer Marketing. Some notable people who attended their events included the Kardashians and Glossier founder, Emily Weiss.
After that, she moved onto QVC where she was a Digital and Social Media manager. At the time, Instagram and YouTube were just developing their Marketing power. Through these platforms, she experimented with creating videos showcasing the items they were selling to give users an idea of what the items would look like on themselves.
She then moved on to working for Jennifer Fisher’s Jewelry as a Digital Director. There she worked with a small team of four where she learned even more by volunteering for roles beyond her initial skillsets. Her work was noticed by a small company called Kendra Scott. At the time, Kendra Scott wasn’t well known and they only had 18 stores with less than 1 mil. in revenue. They called her multiple times before she finally accepted a job interview in Austin, Texas. Despite her friends and colleagues apprehension about her leaving New York for Austin, she decided to trust her gut and join the Kendra Scott team to oversee social media and influencer marketing.
Kendra Scott:
When Samantha joined Kendra Scott, their office was located on the top of their original store on South Congress. The office was small and the air conditioning rarely worked. However, Samantha saw potential in the brand as she got to know more about how they operated. Kendra Scott focused their efforts on Grassroots marketing. This meant that they were consistently working with the local community and stores that were close by. Before Kendra Scott would open a store, they would always hire someone to scope out the area to see how they could immediately involve themselves within the neighborhood. By the time Samantha left Kendra Scott, she was able to increase their followers on Instagram from 100k to 1 mil. The number of stores had gone up from 18 to 110.
As Samantha recalled her time at Kendra Scott, she talked about multiple campaigns they ran that made a huge impact on her career.
The Wins:
New York Store Opening
In New York they partnered with a local company called Colossal Media to create a huge murals at the corner of their store catching people’s attention and drawing them in. These murals were showcased all throughout Instagram with the #PaintNYYellow.
London Booth Opening
In London their opening was a collaboration with Selfridges. They invited notable influencers to create their own jewelry and even set up a jewelry creation inside one of the pods of the London Eye.
Bachelor Cast Collaboration
It was expensive to have The Bachelor sponsor their jewelry on the show, so instead they independently contacted cast members to wear their jewelry! They even hosted a jewelry event at the Bachelor Mansion.
Barbie Partnership
Everyone knows and loves Barbie and so does Kendra Scott ! As a fun campaign, they got Barbie to come into their store and model their jewelry.
Alfred Coffee Partnership
Who doesn’t like coffee? Custom Kendra Scott logos and slogans were printed on Alfred Coffee sleeves to promote the business. “There’s really champagne in here” and “You’re a real gem.”, were some of the cute designs influencers walked away with in hand.
While all of these campaigns were amazing works that Samantha was really proud of, she also disclosed some of the not—so—successful campaigns they participated in.
The Losses:
A Failed Movie Release
The producer of the unnamed movie promised that it would be the next Love Actually, but the premiere was a bust and they made very low numbers at the box office.
A Partnership with Hallmark
In 2019 Hallmark went under fire amidst accusations of not supporting LGBTQ+ relationships. Their partnership with Kendra Scott led the brand to also be caught in this PR crisis. Everyday letters from people who were both pro and (ironically) anti LGBTQ+ came in talking about boycotting Kendra Scott.
Samantha’s run at Kendra Scott was one full of bright and not so bright moments, but by the end of her time she had become the Senior Marketing Director for the company. Her success proves the importance of experimentation and collaboration in experiential marketing.
Tiff’s Treats:
After her time at Kendra Scott, Samantha briefly moved on to CLEAN Cause, a yerba mate company whose profits help support recovering addicts. Unfortunately, the team she handpicked faced staff layoffs because of the pandemic. After this loss of effort she wasn’t able to find enough fulfillment in the position and she decided to move on. Then she found Tiff’s Treats and decided to join their team for Experiential Marketing.
For those who might not know, Tiff’s Treats began as a business 22 years ago founded by two UT Austin students named Leon and Tiffany. They started by delivering cookies to UT Austin students late at night and now years later have grown their business to over 60+ locations.
They were growing fast but needed help marketing to more people to keep that momentum. Here Samantha came in. She took what she learned from Kendra Scott and started incorporating it into Tiff Treat’s campaigns.
Some of these campaigns included Tiff’s Treat Trucks and Treats Tour Events. Here, potential customers were able to sample their treats without going to any of their store locations. They also collaborated with local schools and businesses whenever there were events to get more involved in the community as well.
The newest campaign Samantha envisioned for Tiff’s Treats was expanding their online presence by creating new content on TikTok. One of these notable ideas she came up with was the Cookie Flip Challenge where people tried to see how many times they could flip a cookie onto a spatula without the cookie falling on the floor.
Another successful campaign was #FindingAmy. For Tiff’s Treats 22nd Anniversary, they wanted to get consumers excited about how long they’ve been in business, but weren’t sure how to engage with the customers. After much thinking, they decided to launch a campaign on TikTok to try to find out who their first customer was to give them a year’s worth of free cookies. The only information they had about their first customer was that her name was Amy and that she lived at University Towers. This trended on TikTok and made the national news where they were finally able to find Amy who was happily living in Germany.
Samantha still has new campaigns and ideas up her sleeve and we are excited to see what other plans she has in store for the future.
A Summary:
It was amazing to get to hear about Samantha’s experience in Marketing and all the ways she has grown as a professional. Experiential marketing is such an important part of marketing since it’s what creates a connection between the brand and the consumer. The more ways you can get a customer to engage with a brand, the better your brand will be for it.
Here’s a list of helpful advice to do well in Experiential Marketing from Samantha herself !
- Learn a lot and learn as you go
- Get scrappy with things (No one knows what they’re doing !)
- Social First Marketing (focus on how your brand looks like to other people and make sure it lines up with your brand goals)
- Be flexible and be willing to pivot
- There will be lots of wins but even more losses
- People can sense when a brand is being fake
- Focus on how you can give back to your community and raise awareness for your brand
WRITTEN BY BETTINA MATEO
TEXAS AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION 