Jason Mitchell: [00:00:00] We don't think about like the big idea, we think about brand character. Who are you? What is your character? And then what are all the people around you and what are you fighting for? What are you fighting against? So we spend a lot of time on that. And then all of the things that the brand is doing on social media.

Fall out of that. And I think that we just think about the big idea differently. It's not this sort of like one big quarterly campaign, but rather you are creating a persona and then you are navigating the world through that. And if you can do that in a way that is really interesting and resonates with people, then you can have a lot of success.

Chris Kocek: Welcome to any Insights yet the podcast that explores the intersection of strategy, inspiration, and branding. I'm Chris Ek. In today's episode, I'm joined by Jason Mitchell, CEO of Movement, a social first marketing agency, and a Shorty Awards Agency of the year. Jason started movement 16 years ago when he was still in college, when he [00:01:00] noticed the disconnect between what his professors were teaching and what he was seeing in the behaviors of college students around him.

He could tell that something was changing in the media landscape, and he realized that 32nd spots would no longer be at the center of most campaigns. During our conversation, we explore what it means to be a social first agency and how staffing and speed are critical differentiators. We also talk about the aha moments behind movements, campaigns for Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Klarna.

To get things started though, Jason and I talk about one of his first zag strategies for standing out. It happened in college.

Jason Mitchell: I was a student at the University of Colorado and my grades the first couple years were. Pretty bad. And I really wanted to get into what was called the J School back then. It was the advertising program. It was probably the most competitive program, and there was no way that I was gonna get in with the grades.

But [00:02:00] one of the components, maybe the most important, was an essay. And the essay was about, you know, tell me sort of your life story. Tell me why you're applying into the advertising program. And so I was talking to my friends that were all going through it, and everyone. Basically was just talking about this is my, this is my life and this is why, like a very literal interpretation.

And I was like, okay, there is no way that with my grades I could just tell my honest story and they're gonna get me in. I was like, what if I just totally fabricated a wild, highly entertaining story that was not believable, but compelling and used that as my submission, and so that's what I did and I got in.

I had two, two sort of aha moments. Why is nobody else seeing this one was like, when I was like, oh, I think I need to go against the grain here. Like if everyone's doing the same thing, this is advertising after all. Shouldn't we do something else? And then when I got in and the, and the professors were like, oh, your store, that was [00:03:00] like amazing.

We've, we, you know, the 200 applications like yours was so different from anyone else's. That was like this aha moment was like, oh, this, this is what advertising is. Advertising is not sort of taking formulas and doing whatever analysis is doing. Advertising is like totally bucking the trend to get attention.

So that was a big aha moment. I think also like, uh, instrumental moment for me as I think about the industry. 

Chris Kocek: Now, did you tell the professors, by the way, that was completely fabricated or did you not mention that? 

Jason Mitchell: The story itself was so over the top that I think pretty quickly they were like, this could not be like, it was fantastical.

So I definitely didn't say in it, this isn't true, but what I talked about my town being, you know, overrun and having to escape via, you know, he like, it was like that. It was like an action movie, sci-fi. I think it was pretty clear. 

Chris Kocek: Now you mentioned being in college and, and getting [00:04:00] into that program, and you've said that you believe that the material you were being taught in the advertising program was wildly out of date with the way that you and your classmates were consuming media.

What's an example of that? 

Jason Mitchell: Yeah, so, so let me sort of paint a picture for you. It was, this was like 2007, 2008. We were the first cohort of kids, students that were on social media, on Facebook. Like I think my freshman year was the Facebook and everyone was so excited about it. And my entire college experience, we were engaging on social media.

I remember dig was huge and Twitter and Reddit. Even MySpace. And so that's how we were engaging with one another in class. And I, I just like have this distinct memory of being in class one day and everyone has their laptops open and everyone is on Facebook. The teachers are talking to us about, you know, this is how you reach millennials using TV and out of home.

And I was like, they don't get it. [00:05:00] Like they do not get it. And so that led me down this really interesting path to be like, oh, I think there might be an opportunity here. These professors were only a couple of years out of actually being in the industry, so it's like if the people. Teaching this, the people in the industry do not actually understand how to reach us, the target audience.

That feels like an opportunity. 

Chris Kocek: And you started pitching local companies and getting contracts when you were still in college, you would offer to launch and run their Facebook pages. What were those first companies that you pitched and how did you pitch them? 

Jason Mitchell: Yeah, so I was like, I wonder if I could actually start a social media company that like did this and so.

One of the first things was we had a senior project, and the senior project was a mock pitch and a company comes in and they tell you about the company and everyone is split up into groups and has to put together a campaign. And the guy that came in was this guy who had [00:06:00] started this company called Brain Tonic.

It was this drink with a whole bunch of natural ingredients in it. You know, it was sort of ahead of its time in terms of like a functional drink, but that's what he had. It was called Brain Tonic. Didn't have a lot of money and everyone else, all the other groups were like, this is how we're gonna do a big launch campaign like Gatorade, or this is, you know, all this stuff.

That was like totally unrealistic. And I was like, you know, he's not gonna be doing TV ads or any of this kind of stuff, but he actually could get on Facebook and start talking to customers and building an audience. And so. I was like, he doesn't have any social media. Let me just go and register facebook.com/brain tonic twitter.com, like all of these social media.

Pages and I, I told my group, I'm like, this is what we should do. Like everyone's doing this, this one thing, we're gonna do something totally different. And so when the senior project came, everyone sort of presented one thing and then we were like, Hey, we actually created social media presence for you, and here's a playbook for how you can actually take this today and start engaging with [00:07:00] people at building customers.

Everyone else, it was like, okay, yeah, great job. And for me, after class, he was like, Hey. Can I pay you to do that for me? And I was like, yes you can. And so that was our first customer and client. And you know, from there it was like, oh, I have a social media agency. I mean, it was like one guy who was probably paying me like 500 bucks, but you know, just started talking about it.

And the barriers of entry. We're so little, like, pay me 500 bucks and I'll do it for you. We were able to build a book of business really easily early on just because our price point was so low and people were like, yeah, sure. I'll, I'll give this a flyer then. You know, social media really continue to take off.

Chris Kocek: Yeah. I've said in on many a senior project or capstone project at various schools, and one of the things that I think is often missing, first of all is a budget. Right. So budgets create a natural constraint, which pushes innovation and creativity. And I feel like a lot of students and a lot of [00:08:00] programs would be well served to have some kind of realistic budget.

'cause to your point, a lot of these brands, they're not gonna be doing TV ads. They're not gonna be taking over time square. And so being constrained by the budget actually sharpens creativity in a very interesting way. Were there any other early companies that you can remember 

Jason Mitchell: working with? So one of our first was.

The Denver Nuggets and that came about because we were, we were like one of the first social media agencies in Colorado, and a company reached out to us, a big energy company, reached out to us, brought us in, we pitched, and they were like, that was great. We're not gonna do social media, which today is funny, right?

But that was like, we were pitching people less on us and more on social media. But what they said is, you know, we sponsored Denver Nuggets and they call her Avalanche. You should talk to them. And they were kind enough to make us an introduction. And 21-year-old me had the chance from that introduction to go into, it was called the Pepsi Center at the time, the Pepsi [00:09:00] Center, to go in and pitch the Denver Nuggets.

And I, this was a pivotal moment for me in our story, and I remember going in there. There was like five marketing folks and I, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. I had on like an oversized suit. I looked like an idiot. You know, these guys were like in jeans and t-shirts. And I go in there and I start, I'm pitching, I'm pitching, I think it's going well.

You know, 20 minutes in the CMO comes in and he sits down. I'm like, what do I do? And I just kind of keep going and he like, five minutes later, just like gets up and is like, like I, I don't know what I'm hearing right now. I'm super busy. You have 30 seconds to tell me why we should be on Facebook. And I was like, here's my shot.

And I just, I don't even remember what I said, but I went into it and I pitched him. I so distinctly remember him being like, that was a great answer. We'll be in touch. And he walks out and then, you know, it was again, it was like so cheap, you know? I think they were like, we'll pay you $5,000. You launch us on Facebook and Twitter, run it for a year and we'll give you [00:10:00] season tickets.

We're like, yes, let's go. Let's do it. So we did it. We launched the Denver Nuggets on Facebook. They were one of the first teams in the NBA and then. Pretty quickly after that, we had lots of teams in a calling us saying, Hey, we wanna get on Facebook too. And so that was a really sort of inflection point for our agency where we went from working with very small local companies to the first sort of national company.

So that really fueled our growth early on. 

Chris Kocek: Now, how is social media marketing for sports teams different than say, social media marketing for a CPG brand? 

Jason Mitchell: It's more fun and a lot of people, especially on social talk about community and. For CPG building community, maybe, but it's probably unrealistic, at least in the way that they talk about wanting to do it.

Building a community of, you know, people that are into the same bug spray is unlikely. Maybe, you know, outdoor enthusiasts, but again, unlikely. But sports fans, it really is a community with sports [00:11:00] fans. It's about tapping into that passion and channeling it in a way where they're just talking about it online, constantly.

Towards the things that you want. So, you know, getting people to talk about how great the in-game experience is to help sell tickets, getting people to talk about their height for an upcoming game to drive TV ratings. It's less about building community and more about channeling the community towards the, the right thing that's actually gonna drive, you know, business growth.

It's always on, it's definitely intense. I mean, for the first probably five years I was at a game. Every other day at least, which could seem amazing, but, and it, and it is, but it's also hard. But it, it's just really exciting if anyone has an opportunity to do social media in the sports space, especially like team sports.

It's a amazing way, it's kind of like trial by fire to really. Steal your chops. 

Chris Kocek: Mm-hmm. And what do you think about companies like baby carrots or [00:12:00] companies that sell pears or something and they say, follow us on social media? I've seen some, you know, some things on, uh, on social media where someone's taking a picture of one of these, uh, you know, bags of pears, and then there's a caption that says, ain't no way in hell I'm gonna follow this pair company on social media.

Right. So what advice would you give to them? Would you say just don't bother printing, follow us on social with the various, uh, you know, Instagram handles and things like that. What would you recommend to them? 

Jason Mitchell: I think that. You need to give people a reason to care. I think that brands, brand managers often, you know, they show up every day caring a lot about baby carrots and so they think that other people will.

And they think that when they have new packaging or a new way to cut the carrots or they're now in new grocery stores, people care 'cause they care 'cause it's their job and they forget that. Like that isn't something that people would care about, but people do care about being entertained. [00:13:00] They care about learning new things.

They care about deals and value that is relevant to them. And so, you know, what I would say to those types of brands is like, you know, first of all, figure out who are you as a brand? Like what? What can you authentically talk about that you care about that's true into your DNA? And we call this building out a brand character.

And then it's like, how do you talk to the world in such a way that you're gonna be entertaining? Or they could forget all of that and say, trying to build an organic social media presence. Is not going to be effective for us in this capacity. Let's figure out another way that we can get people to talk about our brands.

Or do we just have a pure influencer play and we're just trying to get in front of people so that when they see our product at the grocery store, they're like, oh, that's what this person that I follow was, was packing their kids lunches with. So I, I think that people. Mistake their interest for their brand with other people.

And they really need to try to look at it through the lens of the consumer and be like, why would this person care? And there's plenty of examples of that. I mean, one of my favorite follows on TikTok is [00:14:00] a guy who mows people's lawn. That's like so boring, right? But he puts out these videos on TikTok where he goes to these houses where they're so overgrown, the weeds, the grass, and everything else, and he goes, Hey, I will mow your lawn for free.

And then he does this sort of video that's really well edited. Of him turning this mess into something beautiful and he gets millions of views. It's like, oh, that is entertaining to people. And so he's really blown up his business. So there's lots of ways to approach it. Uh, you just need to think about it through the lens of the consumer.

Chris Kocek: Yeah. To your point, I think a lot of times the people working the brand have this. Mistaken belief that the truth shall set things free. If we just tell people earnestly, this is what we do and this is how we do it, that's going to get people's attention, and that was great in the 1950s. You're selling a laundry machine or you're selling a refrigerator, go ahead and talk about all the features and benefits, but [00:15:00] nobody is really that interested in features and benefits anymore.

I feel like, for example, scrub Daddy has dialed it in on social media. Right. It's a sponge, 

Jason Mitchell: right. 

Chris Kocek: But the things that they do on that social media channel are absurd, and they just get your attention and you can't turn away. 

Jason Mitchell: Yeah. I mean, I think that. Two things have happened that have changed it. One is we're in this sort of algorithm dominated medium where you need to create content that people are sharing and engaging with to actually get traction.

And so, you know, if you're just earnest, you're talking about values, like it's not shareable. Then because we are seeing so many ads everywhere we look, people are pretty good at tuning stuff out. So when you have those two things that if it's an ad, people are gonna turn it out, and if it's earnest, then nobody's gonna share it.

So it's then not gonna be seen. It forces you down this path of like, you [00:16:00] need to figure out ways to capture attention. 

Chris Kocek: So you have talked about movement, your agency being a social centric agency. What does social centric marketing mean to you and what does that look like? 

Jason Mitchell: So when we started, I and I was talking about how we had to be like.

You should be on social media and convince people of social. I think we're, we're past that, but you know, still, I would say in general, people think about the landscape from like a TV or a spot sort of approach. It's like what's the, what's the spot for us, a, a social centric approach is to sort of revisit that.

Diagram and you put social at the center and you, and it's an understanding that social has become the most important way today, that people learn about new products, that trends sort of rise and fall. And if you think about social at the center, then everything that you're doing from partnerships to out of home, to experiential, to social, to [00:17:00] tv, it's all about driving online bus.

And so that changes. What you're gonna be producing and how you're gonna be producing it. And oftentimes it starts from social media listening, because something that we've seen is if you do great social media listening and you find insights on social and then you amplify those through a whole bunch of different mediums, you could generate tons of online conversation.

We are seeing that that's really what's driving people into restaurants, products, off shelves. It's a reframing of how people think about social, from social as a channel to social as the core. Of what marketing is today. 

Chris Kocek: Mm-hmm. So let's say you're a business and you have a marketing team of two, maybe three people.

How much time should somebody allocate or one member of that team allocate towards social listening? 

Jason Mitchell: A lot. Social listening is, is probably the most important thing. They can do, it's the [00:18:00] same, right? With like with anyone, you go to a party and you just go in and you start talking, talky talking. It's like, okay, how annoying is this person?

But if you come in and you're listening and you're picking up cues for what people are interested, excited about, and then you have relevant things to offer to that conversation, it can be successful. It can be the start of a new relationship. And I think that marketing is, is the same way. You know, we've, we've just seen so many examples of social media listening.

Picking up cues of like, oh, this is something that we could change to the product that would then get people excited about that. They would share it themselves. This is something that we are doing, but we're not putting a lot of energy into, but it's actually resonating with people. So I think that social media listening is.

One of the most important parts of the job and something that we found is that, you know, social media listening is not about having the right tools or infrastructure or anything else. People want to create systems, and of course there are tools, but the best social media listening happens from the marketer [00:19:00] actually being a fan of the category.

If you're working in the outdoor industry, you want to be. An outdoor enthusiast so that you're follow all of the influencers in this space so that you know what the general conversations are. Because that's more than sort of like getting an alert from some sort of a tool, say like, this thing is trending.

You know, just being in the know and seeing the conversations so that you have an intuitive sense of sort of where things are headed is incredibly important. So when we staff teams for our clients, we're always looking at, let's bring in people with. Category expertise that are on their quote unquote time away from work on Instagram following those brands so that they see those opportunities.

And we have so many examples of people seeing those opportunities, you know, at 10 o'clock at night and then being like, oh, let me sign onto the brand account and do something with this. And then that going viral. 

Chris Kocek: Well, as they say in Ireland, the good Lord gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason.

Jason Mitchell: Exactly. I have to remind people of that sometimes. 

Chris Kocek: So can you [00:20:00] share an example or two of something that you guys heard through active social listening that led to either an aha moment for a campaign or a breakthrough idea in terms of a, a new product innovation or a new product line? 

Jason Mitchell: Yeah, we were working with Klarna when they were entering into the US market.

They're a buy now pay later company, like an Afterpay. Really large in Europe trying to penetrate the US market. And they did a whole big marketing campaign and really didn't get much traction at all. And so we did a lot of social media listening to understand sort of why this campaign was a traditional campaign, why it wasn't working.

And this was sort of the very beginning of our relationship. And what we saw was that there was all of this conversation online, people being like. Is this a scam? Like what is this? Is this too good to be true? Because this idea of, hey, you could buy something for a hundred dollars, but you only have to pay $25 a day, then [00:21:00] we can put you on a payment plan, no interest.

And something that people were continually saying is, what's the catch? This doesn't feel real. And so we went back to them and said, you know, you need to educate people about this category because the reason you're not getting any traction is because it feels like a scam. And it's not a scam. But you need to tell them that.

But you can't just tell them it's not a scam. You have to entertain them. And so we came up with this whole campaign called What's the Catch? And we partnered with, uh, this up and coming at the time, influencer Breman Rock, he's now huge. We did this whole really funny campaign around what's the catch? And that did an amazing job of educating people about this new category, about Klarna.

And, and that work was actually so successful on social that they then ran it as their TVC campaign. So a great example of how social listening. Isn't just about social, but it really could be the social powered or social centric approach that informs all of your marketing. 

Klarna Clip: Hey Fish, it's me, Breman Rock, [00:22:00] the Baddest Fish in the sea.

Today I'm gonna be talking to you about Miss Klarna. Now, who's Miss Klarna? You asked? Wait, who is she again? It's an app. Oh, so Klarna is an app. It's K as in karma. You know the rest, Lana did. You know Klarna is Swedish for fish. It's not just fucked that up. Klarna is Swedish for smoother shopping according to Google.

Chris Kocek: Well, and what I love about that example too is that. You're using the language that customers are already using. Right. I think that a lot of times brands, you know, have this idea of what they should be saying or how they should be saying it because they've got brand guidelines and they say, we say this, not that, but then people out there using their own natural language to talk about things.

And if you can. Talk like them, look like them, act like them within reason, you know, not in a pandering way. Then they're gonna say, oh, you get me. You're speaking my language. [00:23:00] Do any other examples come up for you besides Klarna where social listening was like, wow, this is a huge untapped opportunity. 

Jason Mitchell: We had another one that I love for Netflix.

We were working with them and they came to us. For a show that they were relaunching called Unsolved Mysteries, and that was a, the show that had been on TV for a long time. They were bringing it to streaming. They weren't sure how it was gonna do, but were excited about it and wanted us to launch the social campaign.

And so we started through social listening and we said, you know, this is a category true crime that's really growing. What is it that it's driving this growth? And we saw all of these people working with other people on social media joining these Facebook pages or groups to themselves solve crimes. And that was one of the things why, why True crime was like.

Becoming such a big category was people love this new ability to get with others and help solve these things. And so [00:24:00] we came up with a name for this audience. We said, you know, these are our armchair detectives and the way for us to market this show is to really tap into these individuals and get them excited about this.

And so as we were looking through all of the content around Unsal Mysteries, we said, you know, there's so much content that you guys have that isn't making it on air. And these armchair detectives would love to wrap their hands around that because it's gonna help them solve some of these mysteries. And so.

For each episode, we created a Google Drive folder, and we put in all of the behind the scenes, the files from the detectives that we had access to footage that you know, was on sort of the cutting room floor. And we packaged it all up, and then right as it was dropping, we dropped it on Reddit. And so people were able to watch the episodes and then.

Go to Reddit and actually see all of this other stuff and nothing like that had ever been done before on Reddit as a way to use that platform [00:25:00] and. It went like all the way to the front page of Reddit, which drove tons of people to watch the show, which got them engaged and talking, and it generated so much conversation.

In fact, um, it actually led to a tip that led to an arrest, which for us, we, you know, as a KPI was not on the, on the roadmap, but, uh, so exciting. So. That was a very cool example of sort of social listening to understand audience behavior, that that led to a different approach than sort of traditional social or traditional marketing.

Chris Kocek: So you talked about Netflix, and this is making me think of the challenge with traditional movie theater. So I wanna do a little problem solving with you here for a second. You just described watching as a social activity. People like to solve the problem together and kind of their own Sherlock Homes activities around it, but movie theaters.

Are about no talking, no texting. Keep those phones away and silent. And I've [00:26:00] seen some theaters are starting to experiment. With, oh no, you can go ahead and have conversations now. I can't remember which theater group was experimenting with this technology, but basically like, yeah, there's an app that we've created and you can chat and text with your friends during the film and, and all of that, which for people who love cinema, that's like, no, don't interrupt the experience.

What would you. Say or what would you suggest to Hollywood and to the movie Theater Worlds to say, here's what you need to do if you want to get people back into the theaters? I'm putting you on the spot is a tough question. 

Jason Mitchell: If I were running a studio, one of the things that I would. Be thinking a lot about is, okay, how do we evolve the movie going experience?

You know, we we're still sort of like in this era of coming out of the pandemic, I know it's well behind us, but I think people crave in real life experiences even though we spend so much time on social [00:27:00] and. The movie going experience, it's, it's great for watching the movie, but it's not a very social experience.

But there are increasingly more sort of like experiential movie watching experiences, and so I think that there's an opportunity to evolve what movies are from just sort of going. Into, you know, a dark room and sitting in silence and experiencing it to a more social way to experience storytelling. So that's what I would be thinking about is not like, how do we market this thing that we have today, but rather how do we change the product to be.

More interestingly engaging as we think about, you know, a shifting sort of future. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah. I love that idea of, of having basically a pre and post social activity around the movie, right? So that people can gather, talk, drink, do all that. Watch the movie, enjoy it, and then afterward. Now that works for certain kinds of films.

So you know, we've got Alamo Drafthouse, [00:28:00] and they do do things like that, right? They even have the jaws float in the water, and then people will come around with dorsal fins and try to scare the bejeebers outta you, right? Mm-hmm. Um, so, so they do make for these like interesting social ready experiences.

So it works for certain kinds of movies. It might not work for other movies quite as well, but still the idea of thinking about. Pre and post is a really important part of the overall cycle of the movie going experience, right? 

Jason Mitchell: Yeah, exactly. And and I think it's even the during like is this idea of everyone sitting there and watching in silence always going to be the way that movies are experienced.

I mean, you talked about like sitting there and texting, like, I don't think that's a very great experience, but the nature of what movies are could change and evolve. You know, like so a concert is another, or a sporting event is another great. Experience where you're entertained and you're watching something unfold, and it doesn't need to be quiet.

In fact, it's much better if everyone's really loud. Could movies [00:29:00] evolve so that they are enjoyed in a different way. If I was in that business, I would spend a lot of time thinking about it because I think there's a need for it to evolve and for it to become sort of more of a social event. 

Chris Kocek: Well, again, the Alamo has these quota alongs, so for movies that have just been in the culture for so long and people have watched them so many times, they'll do these like quota along movie, you know, series where people come in and it's meant to be rowdy, not as rowdy as the Minecraft movie Got.

You know, when that came out and people were like, you know when, when the chicken jockey line would happen and everybody would just go berserk? Uh, that's a little bit different. But that certainly got a lot of social attention, didn't it? 

Jason Mitchell: Yeah, exactly. Right. And, and, and it's sort of self-fulfilling, right?

Because then people are talking about it, they post about it, then more people want to go and experience it themselves. So another thing that I, I, I think a lot about with social media marketing is that. Oftentimes people think about it as like, okay, well what are we doing? What are we putting out into the world?

[00:30:00] But the best social media marketing is about. Creating experiences or products that other people are talking about. And so I think, you know, the best movie marketing right is when everyone is talking about your movie and how do you do that? Obviously it's like you create a great movie, but you also can make it culturally relevant or fun or add components like that where you know, people can take a photo of it or talk about it.

Chris Kocek: Now, what's the secret to setting up a good social listening system when you're thinking about, you know, whether it's for the Denver Nuggets or or Netflix. Are there certain words that you're obviously monitoring for? Are you monitoring every day? Can you tell us a little bit about best practices or good ideas for setting up a social listening system?

Jason Mitchell: I think there's really two components to it. One is getting the right social listening software set up. You know, there's so many different platforms. Uh, we've tried so many different versions of, of them over the years and, you know, more increasingly we're building out our own. And it's [00:31:00] increasingly easy with, with AI to, to build your own systems.

We've been using Waldo FYI, is, is a really great AI powered tool that we've been using a lot. I think that more importantly than that. Is having people on the team that are just plugged into that industry that are sort of like always online. There is a reality of of having people that are just like.

Permanently seeing what the trends are on TikTok, what's on Instagram. I wanna make sure that people have balance and they're not working all of the time, but we happen to be a social media agency, and social media is constantly moving. It doesn't stop at, you know, six o'clock at night. And so we, we look to hire people that just love social media.

That are obsessed with culture and, and, and more specifically obsessed with the vertical that they're in. And when you get those people on the team, it's oftentimes not the software that's like this thing is trending, it's people on the team that are like, oh my [00:32:00] God, did you see what this person did this morning?

We need to do something with it. And so I think who you hire. And how you get them excited about being engaged continuously is the most important part of doing social listening. Well, 

Chris Kocek: awesome. Now you've come a long way since those early days in college doing $500 accounts now. Now you're doing much bigger business.

How many people are now at movement? 

Jason Mitchell: I think we're about 180 people today. We, we recently acquired Newfangled Studios. They're a social first production company and we were about 150. They're about 30. Collectively, we're about 180 people and spread all over the us. 

Chris Kocek: Mm-hmm. And you have had an epiphany of your own in the process of building movement into what it is today.

What was one of the things that kind of like struck you as like, oh my gosh, we need to be doing things differently? 

Jason Mitchell: One of the great things about being a a social agency is that our industry is changing constantly. [00:33:00] And so our entire DNA is built around change and really embracing change. And I think the reason we even had a shot is because traditional agencies, when social media was a thing, they were like, Ugh, we don't wanna do Facebook.

I was like, great. We do. And then as, as Facebook evolved and there's new platforms and new way the platforms, you know, we went to from like friend base to interest base and algorithm and ai, all these different changes we're continually adapting. Actually right now we're in the process of going through a big change.

We're doing an an entire sort of structural change and how we staff teams. We were staffed by department, I think in a very traditional sense. And as our accounts scaled up, we just scaled up how many people we had on those teams and. One of the things that, that I think people for a long time thought was true about social was they'd be like, oh, you can't just have two people on the social team.

You need to have all of these people with deep specialization. So that's what we did, and we built these teams that were structured around departments and we'd have, you know, all of these different very highly specialized roles. And what we found [00:34:00] was that actually was not the most efficient way. And, and sort of the thing that we held up, and it was the aha moment was, you know, we looked at all of the processes and we were like, wait for this client.

We have to have nine people touch this piece of content just to post one UGC photo. Like that's insane. You know, the problem of having so many people involved is like every time it goes from one person to another, there's time that takes sort of transformation it, but also there's information loss that happens along the way.

And so we said, you know, we think there's probably a better way. What if we looked at a new system and, and we looked at the pod system where we have smaller dedicated pods. Of more generalists and actually we're sort of pushing away from deep specialization and trying to bring in people that have a more generalized skillset and experience in social and they can do, you know, social media strategy and writing, and they can do some design work so we can have more of those people working together focused around one [00:35:00] thing.

And that's been incredibly successful. We just went through a prime day. Amazon's a big client of ours and. It was one of our first times working in this pod system, and, and we were able, I mean, we produced about 1600 pieces of content during the week, and, uh, we're only able to do that because we change the structure.

So that's something that we're always looking at is how do we continually evolve to be, you know, as efficient, as creative as possible. 

Chris Kocek: I need to pause for a second and just ask, did I hear that right? 1600 pieces of content in a week? 

Jason Mitchell: Yeah. Four days, actually 

Chris Kocek: in four days. How, how do you manage to create that much content in such a short period of time?

There's gotta be some AI in there. 

Jason Mitchell: We don't use AI to create content. We use, we use AI as a tool to brainstorm with as a partner. We do use a lot of automations and we create systems. We built an integration between Figma and Airtable [00:36:00] so that we could be really fast with it. You know, we have templates set up.

It's about a 50 person team, but there's a really big difference between social that most brands are doing an enterprise level social, and you need to figure out how to be able to produce really high volumes of content. That are also perfect. You know, you need to basically have perfection for, you know, these really large multinationals, and so we've just built teams and systems that are able to handle that.

Chris Kocek: Yep. A lot of things have to go right to work there. Now we're talking about ai. You guys don't use AI in that way to create content. And speaking of ai. You probably heard Mark Zuckerberg say, we're gonna get to a point where you're a business and you'll just come to us. You'll tell us what your objective is.

You'll connect to your bank account, and you don't need any creative, you don't need any targeting demographics, you don't need any measurement except to be able to read the results that we spit out. Do you think that's true or do you think social media [00:37:00] agencies like movement will still need to create assets and think about target demographics?

Jason Mitchell: I think you have to take everything that they say with a bit a grain of salt. And I'll give you a perfect example. Companies like Facebook and Googles and others, you know, 15 years ago said, we've solved it up until this point. You know, there's the maxim. I know that half of my advertising isn't working, I just don't know which half.

That is gonna be a thing of the past with, you know, the, the attribution modeling and, and everything that we can do. And here we are 15, 20 years later and I think a lot of marketers with fancy attribution and everything else still are not entirely sure which parts of marketing are actually driving results.

It's still incredibly hard to measure. And so I think that. Yes, there are gonna be amazing technological improvements that we're going to use, but the idea that like, okay, yep, we, we solve marketing, I [00:38:00] think is not going to be the case. The other thing is humans are incredibly creative and. AI is really good at connecting dots, but I don't think that AI is able to today or over the next five years, replace human creativity and advertising is really about creativity.

It's what I said at the beginning when everyone was doing this one thing. Let me think about a way to do it entirely different and. I don't think that AI is great at that. I don't think that that is what Zuckerberg was talking about. I think it was sort of like, oh, we're gonna figure out this approach that everyone's gonna use.

When everyone is using that same approach. You know, what is going to break out? What is gonna break through? You know, it's people that are not using that approach that are actually tapping into human. Creativity and ingenuity. I think that all of us in this industry need to get really comfortable with working with these tools.

You know, I see AI as a [00:39:00] tool. I mean, I'm using chat GBT every single day, multiple times as a thought partner, and that's really helpful. But I'm not outsourcing all of my thinking to chat GBT that wouldn't be successful. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah. Well I think too, we're in an era where mimetic sound bites are what people.

Sometimes think about doing so that everybody will say, he said what? And then it just creates chatter for like one or two days. I mean, here we are talking about it. And so to your point, taking it with a grain of salt's really important because it's, the soundbite is designed to shake the beehive and get, get buzz going around it.

And that's kind of the era that we're in. Can you think of an example of how you or a member of your team used AI recently to get to a previously hidden aha moment? 

Jason Mitchell: Jenny Nicholson is, is our head of innovation and sort of leads ai and we got a brief from a client. The client was like, we wanna do some big swings, we wanna do some really [00:40:00] interesting work.

And they sent over a list of the types of campaigns that they wanted to do, and Jenny built a tool for us. It's a, an AI agent where it evaluated that and said, this is the type of things that this client likes, but then all of us could put in. All of our favorite campaigns. And it would prompt us like, what about this?

What about this? And then it'd spit back, oh, this is the type of advertising that resonates with you. This is the work that you wanna be doing. This is why you get out of bed in the morning. And so for some of us, it was like. You actually hate advertising, you know, but you love connecting great products with people and you wanna strip out all of the bullshit and the type of advertising that you love is sort of like what Patagonia's doing, or what Ben and Jerry's is doing, and like, that's what you should be focused on.

Other people is like, you love the like. Over the top social first stuff like what Duolingo is doing or liquid death. It, it really helped [00:41:00] all of us on the team understand like, oh, this is the work that I wanna be doing by sort of connecting the dots that were hard for us to see. So that was a really cool aha moment.

And, and something that Jenny says that I think is so true is she's like, you know, people think a lot about AI for content creation or coming up with new ideas or anything else. That's not what it's good for. It's good for seeing patterns that humans often miss. It's good for to get huge data sets and not data sets in the terms of numbers, but just like anything as data and helping you see things that you might be missing.

Chris Kocek: Yeah, that's such a great example. I always tell people. Pattern recognition is kind of one of the key first steps to building an insight. You have to be able to identify patterns that other people don't see, and AI is a huge helper in that because AI does have its biases because of the large language models that it's built on.

But it seems to have fewer biases in some cases compared to most humans. Like the number [00:42:00] of biases that we bring to the table as humans. Is practically infinite. And so being able to find that through line, like you said, is a, is a huge powerful way to use ai. Now, before we get into the speed round, I wanted to ask you, based on what you're talking about with social media, do you think that this era of social media that we're in is killing the big idea or is it making the big idea more important than ever?

Jason Mitchell: We don't think about like the big idea, we think about brand character. And for us, like maybe the big idea is like, who are you as a brand that is going to be interesting to other people? Imagine your brand, like lives in the world of a sitcom. Who are you? What is your character? And then where are all the people around you and what are you fighting for?

What are you fighting against? All that kind of stuff. So we spend a lot of time on that. And then all of the things that the brand is doing on social media. Fall out of that. And I think that we just think about the big idea differently. It's [00:43:00] not this sort of like one big quarterly campaign, but rather, you know, you are creating a, a character, a persona, and then you are navigating the world through that.

And if you can do that in a way that is really interesting and resonates with people, then you can have a lot of success. It's like, okay, cool. This week we're trying this thing. It hit great. Let's do more of that next week. We'll try This other thing didn't work fine. Let's try something else. So I think it's just we're in a totally different world than sort of that big quarterly idea world that we've been in for a long time.

Chris Kocek: In season one. Andy Pearson talked about that with their brand persona that like basically what would Liquid Death do? In this situation, what is that liquid death logic that springs from who that brand character is and how do they navigate? And I just, I love this idea of it helps you be more nimble and you get an infinite number of at bats, like you said, so, right.

Great advice. Right? Yeah. All [00:44:00] right. We're at the speed round. Everyone's favorite. Ding, ding, ding. Here we go. Who's your favorite TikTok creator besides the one that you mentioned? Who? Mows lawns. 

Jason Mitchell: I love Subway. Takes. Go find it. He just goes to Subway. He goes, what's your take? People will give their take.

He'll always say, a hundred percent agree, a hundred percent disagree, and they'll get into, and it's just like a, a great forum for. Good, honest conversation. He's amazing host. 

Chris Kocek: Does he give them any other prompt or he just says, what's your take? 

Jason Mitchell: I mean, I'm sure there's some reproduction that happens, but he just says, what's your take?

You know, everyone sort of has a hot take, right? So he goes, people that wear white shoes don't fuck. That was like a hot take. And it was like, what? And then they had a whole conversation about it. And uh, you know, some people just have like, you know, interesting takes. Some are expected, some aren't. You know, I think one of the, the things I love about social media, um, sort of like longer form, it's like a couple minutes is like.

These boxes of creativity. So, so Hot Ones is a good example. So sort of a talk show, but [00:45:00] we're eating progressively hotter and hotter wings. So you have these sort of like boxes, um, that you put people in, but then within that box there's so much room for creativity. So that's a good TikTok one. 

Chris Kocek: What's your favorite word in English or any other language?

Jason Mitchell: My son and I have been saying stok a lot, uh, as in like, I'm stoked. That's a great one. It's a, I think a, a great mentality and, and way to live life. 

Chris Kocek: What was your favorite subject in school? Primary school, middle school, high school, college. 

Jason Mitchell: I got really into video editing in high school. That was probably like my favorite subject ever was I was a big skier.

We'd make ski movies, go edit it. We had a great little editing bay at my, my public high school, so, and actually led me to wanting to be a, a filmmaker, which then I had to watch like Citizen Kane and all this old stuff. It was not for me. So that's how I got into Advertis Inc. 

Chris Kocek: Nice. If you were talking to a 5-year-old, how would you describe what you do?

Jason Mitchell: I would say, you know, my job is [00:46:00] to. Build a place that people come to every day to work where they're excited to be there. They like the people that they're working with. They're working really hard, and it's my job to make sure that we have that place to show up to every single day. 

Chris Kocek: What's the most recent good book you've read or a movie or TV show that you've watched?

Jason Mitchell: I guess I didn't finish. I, I put it down to pick up another one, but what a book that's having a, a profound impact on me as a leader is a book called Turn the Ship Around by a Navy Captain David Marquette. And it's a really interesting story he took over. Uh, being a captain of a submarine, it was the worst performing submarine in the fleet, and over a series of months, he, he sort of turned it around to become the top performing.

And it's, it's the story of leadership and sort of bucking the trend of how the military had been [00:47:00] leading for a long time to create a better system. And it's sort of a. It's not a top-down approach. Rather it's setting a vision and then empowering your team to, you know, be them leaders themselves. And it, it just is amazingly written book and highly recommend it.

Chris Kocek: We've sort of developed a bit of a, a book list. It's not quite as popular as Oprah's book list. Okay. Or Reese Witherspoon's book list. But it is interesting because by talking to a lot of strategists and creative officers. We've had, you know, people talk about books on stoicism. Chris Voss has never split the difference.

So it's a wide range that people are reading and listening to. We share those at the end of each season to say like, Hey, here's your summer reading list, your winter reading list, things like that. Is there a brand whose work you really admire or you think to yourself, oh, that's so good. I wish I'd come up with that.

Jason Mitchell: The So many Dicks campaign by Elf Beauty. I just was like, fuck. That is so [00:48:00] smart. That insight and the connection between, wow, this is male dominated to. There's more Dicks or Richards or whatever than women on public like that to, to me that was just like connecting a lot of dots that led to brilliant, breakthrough, creative.

Chris Kocek: What's one of the most interesting jobs you had before you got into the work you do now that helps you do your job better? 

Jason Mitchell: I started moving in college, so like, I really did not have a lot of jobs before doing this, but the summer before my, my senior year. I went back home and I got a job working for a music company that was going on.

MySpace and finding bands and putting together these like packages, these CDs where they would get 10 bands in a city together that were on MySpace and sell to them like, Hey, we're doing a cd. Best bands Nashville. Do you wanna be [00:49:00] on it? It's $600. And I learned sales, like I learned about social media marketing through that, but it was like we were cold emailing, cold calling, selling, and for anyone that wants to be an entrepreneur.

You have to learn how to sell, and that's how I learned how to sell. 

Chris Kocek: Surprise. Question here, is there anything that you've learned from anybody or from a book about how to keep your head up when selling, when you get so many nos, anything, any, any wisdom that anyone has shared with you? 

Jason Mitchell: There's so many cliches, but I, but I, I do think one of the biggest cliches is, is so true, which is that like every, no.

Gets you one step closer to a yes. You have to wade through so many nos, and that is a challenge and people really hate rejection. When I think about like what has led to our success. It's not that we're, you know, genius marketers, it's perseverance. You know, we [00:50:00] have just picked ourselves up over and over and over and over again for 16 years, and I think that people are scared to do that.

I, I think a lot of people, you know, fear, rejection, and, and sales are all about overcoming. The No and getting to the yes. And so I think being like, like sales, cold calling, all that kind of stuff is like the last job so many people would want, but I actually think it's one of the best jobs that you can have early on because you get comfortable with rejection.

And I also just think that's a, a great way to approach life to get comfortable with rejection because then you're willing to take risks and if you're willing to take risks and put yourself out there. Then good things will happen. 

Chris Kocek: Mm. That's a great piece of advice. But that leads us to the last question, which is about advice.

Doesn't have to be about sales specifically, but what's a piece of advice that you got early on in life, maybe from a family member, from a fortune cookie that you still remember to this day or that you think of often? 

Jason Mitchell: Something I, I think about often because, [00:51:00] you know, life is hard, you know, running a company, I have three young kids, like it's a, it's a wild world out there.

And at least I tend to beat myself up sometimes, and I forget who said it, but at some point somebody said to me, be kind to yourself. And it's something that I think about all the time when I'm thinking, when I'm having like, oh, I didn't do this, or that person won the pitch and not me. Or, you know, I could have been a better dad last night, but I, you know, was looking at my emails and I say to myself, Hey, like, Jason, be kind to yourself.

And it just grounds me. And, and you know, I'm reminded that like, hey, I, I, I have a relationship with myself. I have these inner thoughts and, and if I'm kind to myself, I'm gonna have a better day and a better life. So that's something that really resonated with me and I still think about every day. I would say.

Do you meditate by any chance? I try to. I, I got into the practice maybe, maybe 10 years ago, [00:52:00] and I go through. Stops and starts. I, I try to at least get 10 minutes in a few times a week. And there's a couple pieces of it that actually for me, really. Or even better than, than meditation one is I say to myself during meditation, today's gonna be a good day.

And then I, I try to practice gratitude and I think about like, I'm grateful for my wife, I'm grateful for my kids. Those are obvious. But then also, like, if there's somebody at work, then I'm not getting along with, I'm like, I'm grateful for this person and here's why. And when I, when I start my days with just a little bit of gratitude, I show up better.

I'm a better person. 

Chris Kocek: Nice. Well, Jason, thank you for sharing these meditations with us, these aha moments and all of the cool things that you're doing at Movement. I really appreciate your time. 

Jason Mitchell: Yeah, thank you so much. This is a fun conversation.

Chris Kocek: I Thanks again to our guest, Jason Mitchell from Movement. If you want to connect with Jason, you can find him on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed [00:53:00] today's episode, please give us five stars on your favorite podcast platform and share it with colleagues and clients who could use some inspiration. Just send them a link and say, you'll see this is what I'm talking about, insights.

If you're looking for even more ideas and aha moments, head over to chris koeck.com. There you can find some of my newest online courses, case studies, and creative exercises. You can even sign up for one of my hands-on workshops where I show you firsthand how to build effective insights faster. The workshops are great for helping with new business pitches.

And for creating culturally contagious campaigns. Special thanks to Megan Palmer for editing, sound mixing and production support. Until next time, keep looking for patterns, finding contradictions, and asking what if more often.