What 5.5 Million Followers Taught Her About Brand Social
Get ready to take notes, this episode is a playbook for outdoor brands and creators...
Starting Line
Our friend Maren has been in the world of Brands and Social Media since the earliest days, and the insights that she has gathered along the way can help anyone - brand or creator - become successful. We’re lucky to be able to work with Maren in her current role, and on today’s podcast, we got her to share a ton of actionable insight. This was a fun one, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did:
What 5.5 Million Followers Taught Her About Brand Social
Maren Hamilton ran global social at The North Face — building and executing a strategy for 5.5 million followers, integrating athletes and creators, and navigating every platform shift from the follow graph to the discovery graph. Then she left to help build Popfly, the creator platform built specifically for the outdoor industry.
In this conversation, Maren shares the playbook she developed at TNF for running brand social at scale, including how to say no to the hundreds of internal requests that flood every social team, why the outdoor buying journey is fundamentally different from fashion and beauty, and what brands still get wrong about TikTok, Threads, and Facebook. Plus: Why Head of Social to CMO is now a real career path, what makes a creator pitch actually land with a brand, and the Adidas sub-two-hour marathon moment that might be the greatest brand activation of the decade.
Marketing Resources For Brands & Creators
On this podcast, and many others, we’ve talked about how Popfly helps brands and creators make connections. But one other thing that we’ve found valuable are the articles and insights they share on their blog. Check out some of the latest articles:
The Missing Piece in Most Tourism Marketing Strategies
Why Outdoor Creators Outperform
The Tools You Need In Your Adventure Creator Toolbox
If you’re a brand or creator reading this, we highly recommend joining us over on Popfly. You can get a custom demo or jump right into the platform using our links:
Job Of The Week
👉 If you listened to this week’s episode and got excited about a role in social media, you are in luck! Keen just listed this role: Senior Director, Social Media.
👀 Nike has an opening for a Sports Marketing Director, Running Athlete Development.
Show Notes
BPC - Brand, Product, Content
BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using, and Content that we love.
🏔️ Halfdays x HOKA: Maren brought this collaboration to our attention, we haven’t seen HOKA do anything like this before, and it turned out really cool. Have a look if you haven’t already!
👉 Keen x 18 East: Maren shared this collab between the two brands, we’re digging the texture of these shoes, very cool.
🤣 Gnarly Nutrition x DBo: It’s been years since this came out, and we still can’t get enough of this video. If this podcast thing doesn’t work out for DBo, acting might be another career path!
🔥 Supercommunicators (Book): This is probably the closest (and most recent) guide to improving your communication skills, developing relationships, and so much more. Fascinating read!
🎙️ Supercommunicators author on MFM: If you don’t want to read an entire book, this podcast covers a lot of the insights with the author. MFM is a perennial favorite amongst our crew, if you haven’t listened to it, we highly recommend it!
🏆 Adidas Pro Evo 3: The shoe that officially smashed the two hour marathon barrier. You’ve undoubtedly heard about the result, now have a look at the shoe that did it!
Thank You
Next week on the podcast, we are joined by a crowd favorite - but this time, he’s got something completely new that is going to get everyone’s galaxy brains turned on. We can’t wait to share this one with you.
What an coincidence! Literally just finished listening to her interview on backcountry marketing yesterday! https://www.threads.com/@ming.sss.58/post/DYVaGsAmb-I?xmt=AQG0wZGNW4ksA8GqKFhtKk4CYUV_dOCTVaI4jHaJEiPStSvnYO6VCdvtjstY5M8Cgy953mo&slof=1