BGBS 051: Ariel Rubin | Kum & Go | Twitter Is Hard!

BGBS 051: Ariel Rubin | Kum & Go | Twitter Is Hard!

Ariel Rubin, Director of Communication for Kum & Go, is a Webby Award-winning digital strategist with over 10 years of experience in social media and content creation in Uganda, Sudan, Turkey, Switzerland, and the United States. Ariel is a master at Twitter, bringing progressive, fun, and human content to Kum & Go, a fourth-generation convenience store chain with its headquarters based in Iowa.  As Ariel puts it, brands have a responsibility to be good corporate citizens. He uses Kum & Go’s signature humor to bring an audience large enough to amplify the voices of marginalized communities that don’t usually feel like they are heard. We applaud Kum & Go for continuing to stand up for humanity and feel inspired to do the same. With that, we ask you, who will you stand up for today?

In this episode, you'll learn...

• Ariel has lived all over the world, including Turkey, Switzerland, Uganda, London, and more before talking to the president of Kum & Go and deciding to settle down in Iowa 
• Kum & Go is a fourth-generation owned business from a family that has lived in Iowa and has served its people for over 60 years
• The reason why Ariel chooses to be funny on Twitter is because when he wants to speak on a serious issue, he has a built audience that will listen
• Ariel describes Kum & Go as compassionate, welcoming, inclusive, and open. When tackling today’s issues, they put humanity and science first
• You can’t underestimate the power of publicly standing as an ally in a state like Iowa, where people may feel like their voices aren’t heard
• All of the content created for Kum & Go is organic, created in-house, and on free software without many promotions. And yet they’ve found outstanding traction in the online world
• One of Ariel’s biggest posting failures was a meme about college football. Of all his time posting about global crises, he never received nearly as much rage as with the college football scandal
• When posting on social media, Ariel does not just compete with other convenience stores for your attention. He competes with your texts, streaming shows, the news, and more. Getting even 5 seconds of your time is difficult 
• Maintaining relevance is a challenge because audience behavior is changing every day. That is why Ariel never plans a tweet and would rather begin conversations based on what happens that day on social media
• Consistency is key with social media, even when you don’t find easy success.

Resources

Ariel Rubin

LinkedIn: Ariel Rubin Twitter: @arieljrubin

Kum & Go

Twitter: @kumandgo Instagram: @kumandgo TikTok: @realkumandgo

Quotes

[9:27] Here at Kum & Go, it's actually about some really inspiring things. And to me, that was what was exciting about it. It wasn't just a convenience store, it was a place that cares about some really progressive causes and actually wants to show up in the community in a really powerful way. [21:04] I think brands just assume that people care about their thing as much as they care about their thing. And the thing is, you’ve got to earn your audience's care and earn their trust...The strategy behind this whole thing is that I want to be funny on Twitter because when I have something serious to say, I want to have someone to say it to. [23:46] Frankly, our strategy, I don't put much stock into that, because the platforms are changing so quickly, algorithms are changing so quickly, the audience behavior is changing every day. I haven’t planned a single tweet in my life. I don't have a tweet ready. I don't know what I'm gonna tweet today. I don't know what I'll tweet tomorrow... And that is on purpose.  [27:28] There’s a lot of people here who don’t feel like their voices are heard and I think if we can help amplify those voices and help show up to this community, I think we’re doing good work.

Podcast Transcript

Ariel Rubin 0:02 We did a tweet about the cyclones and the hot guys college football and it was one of the teams lost and so the team, we ended up getting image of a team getting pushed down the stairs, it like spread on Reddit and spread all over and people were absolutely livid. I mean they were taking photos of themselves cutting up their come and go and rewards card and tweeting it and calling for boycotts. And it was like this huge fear and we had like emergency meeting and people were would never I mean, I would I had like, it reached like the far reaches of the internet in Iowa. And it was like a real And anyway, the news covered it. I was quoted in the Des Moines register. I'm very proud of them to have this on my resume at the time. Twitter is hard says come and go spokesperson horio ribbon. Marc Gutman 0:55 Casting from Boulder, Colorado. This is the Baby Got Back story Podcast, where we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like big back stories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory. We are talking with Ariel Rubin, the director of communications that come and go, Wait, wait, you mean, come and go that convenience store and gas stations with that funny name? Yep, that's the one. Today's guest Aereo Rubin is a Webby Award winning digital strategist with over 10 years experience in social media and content creation in New gunda, Sudan, Turkey, Switzerland and the United States. And today, he heads up social media, and communications that come and go. That don't go anywhere. I'm going to tell you why Ariel is going to be a must listen episode right after I remind you to rate and review this show. If you're listening, I'm assuming you like it. And if that's the case, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over iTunes or Spotify, iTunes and Spotify. Use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. Better yet, please recommend the show to at least one friend who you think will like it. If this is your first time listening, please consider subscribing. subscribing is like being best friends BFF. We might even get BFF bracelets. But only if you subscribe. Alright, back to Ariel. I asked Ariel to be a guest on today's show. Because I was drawn to his work. I noticed that Kum and Go was showing up on social media, first Instagram, and then Twitter. At least that's how I discovered them. And I was immediately engaged with their content. They were funny, progressive, human, fun, interesting. And they are a convenience store. And that began my stocking of Ariel. I had to know how all this worked. Who was the crazy person behind building out a strong voice on social media? What did their operation look like? Did they have 100 interns creating all this content? Spoiler alert, they do not. How did they approach social media? Is it working and on and on and on? Ariel covers all that and more in our conversation. And this is his story. I'm here with Ariel Reuben, the Director of Communications for Kum & Go, Ariel, what is Kum & Go and what does the Director of Communications do at Kum & Go? Ariel Rubin 3:50 Well, first, thanks for having me. Marc, It's fun to be here. What is Kum & Go? Kum & Go is a convenience store chain based in headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. We have about 400 stores a little over 400 stores now in 11 states. And basically, we're a fourth-generation family run business that started here and really has grown up to be a place it really prides itself I think I'm an opening his doors to everyone really being welcoming, being there for the community, we give 10% back of our pre-tax profits to communities we serve to charities. That sets us apart. And we're really kind of a country that's led by our values, you know, we really look to the communities we were serving and think about how we can kind of make things better for them. So it's a sweet place to work. I really like it. I've been there for about a year and a half. And the Director of Communications, as Director of Communications, my kind of remit is, is our public and kind of internal communications work in our PR or social or events that we put on. Obviously, we're doing quite a few less events in person, at least right now due to COVID. But that's sort of the world we work in and then yeah, everything in between. Marc Gutman 4:55 Yeah. And to those of you listening so you might be asking yourself like why are we talking to a guy that you know does communications for a gas station and convenience store? And you know, a little bit of the backstory is that Kum & Go has gotten my attention for their very progressive, very engaging social media campaigns, particularly on Twitter, they have a really nice presence on Instagram. And so I personally was so intrigued, I was so captivated. You know, I've also been a fan of the actual the store locations, when it when we're on road trips, my kids all want to go because you can feel that there's something different. And I think that that's a really cool thing about a brand is you don't always know why you love it, you don't always know why you're drawn to it, but you feel that it's different. And you walk into a Kum & Go store and they're friendly, and they're light, and they're bright. And they offer, you know, different offerings in terms of healthy food options, and all sorts of things. And people just generally seem happy there. So that's a little bit of the context of why we're talking about Ariel. Like, I want to get into your story. And I kind of want to, you know, get to how you're doing social media and why you've even decided to do it. I mean, I don't follow any other convenience stores and gas stations. But you know, when we met, I was super intrigued by your your background, because you're not from Des Moines. You certainly don't have a background in convenience stores or the oil industry or gas stations. You know, why don't we go? I mean, did when you were growing up? Did you think that you'd be running communications and social media for an outfit like Kum & Go? Ariel Rubin 6:34 Oh, that's a no, I I don't think I did. That was not necessarily something I was planning to do. But you know, as my grandmother would have said, Man plans and God laughs so, you know, here we are. No, it's been a while. I mean, I guess a bit of background on me. I'm, I'm not from Iowa. As you mentioned, I'm a bit of all over. I was born in Canada, I grew up in North Carolina, I went to University in New York. I was in New York for a while, and then I kind of was all over the place I was in journalism, or trying to be for a long time. Many years ago, I worked in Uganda as a newspaper, I had a Master's from the London School of Economics, actually, in human rights and development in the UN were actually involved in communications. And that was really where that my passion for that came, I started the first Twitter account for UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme in Sudan, or done blogs there ended up I was in Sudan for three years and then went to Turkey for two years where I worked for the UNDP there as well running digital content. And then I worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland, where I was the head of digital content. And that's where I got to do some really cool stuff with the pretty amazing humanitarian organization there traveling all over the world, producing some cool kind of, you know, engagement campaigns, both with communities we work with for there, you know, communities in Sudan, or Iraq or wherever, but also community back home, how do we get people engaged? How do we get Americans and Europeans engaged in some really, really tough subjects? So that was what I was doing for almost a decade. And I ended up through sort of a kind of a fortuitous circumstance, having a conversation with the president of Kum & Go. At a time when I was kind of ready to move back to us, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. But I wanted to get out of the nonprofit world for almost 10 years, and I wanted to try something completely different. And Tanner Krauss is the 32-year-old president of Kum & Go really cool guy, really personable guy. And I think a really strong visionary for kind of what a company like his can look like in the future. And he really, we had a great conversation about it. And he kind of got me excited, and the job was there. And I applied and ended up, you know, I came here from Switzerland with my wife and my one-year-old daughter at the time, and we really liked it, you know, it was like a really fun turn for me. And I just thought, you know, I think when you're doing these kind of communications jobs in general, I, for me, at least, I always want to make sure that I can do it in another space so I could I figured out how to do this in a way it's easy, quote unquote, easy to, to get people interested, I think or to do content about what's going on in a place like Syria or Yemen. You know, it's it's a pretty tough subject. And it's easy to kind of show that. But I guess the challenge for me with a place like Kum & Go was like, how do you do that for hot dogs? Like, I don't mean to make light of it. But it's really it's like, how do you get people to care about something? Ultimately, as a communications person, my job is to make you care about something that I'm doing the Red Cross of the UN, it was about some pretty tough things and here at Kum & Go, it's actually about some really inspiring things. And that was, to me, what was exciting about it was, it wasn't just a convenience store, it was a place that that cares about some really progressive causes and actually, you know, wants to show up in the community in a really powerful way. And they hadn't really figured out how to tell that story, and how to get their audience to really care about it or to know about it. So that was a challenge that sort of presented to me. And what I found really exciting to do was like, how do I get people to care about this store with a kind of a funny name, you know, how do we turn it from? It's coming out to like, wow, this is a community that's at the forefront of some really important issues right now. So That's sort of the connection for me. Marc Gutman 10:02 Yeah. And take me back to that conversation with Tanner. I mean, I can only imagine Here you are. You're, you know, living in Switzerland you're doing, you know, important work, you're doing heavy work, you're, you're accomplishing experience. It's not like you're just out of school and kind of like looking to take anything. And this young CEO of a convenience store says, "Hey, I want you to do my communication, like, what's that look like? I mean, are you at first skeptical? Are you like, all in like, What's that? What's that look like? Ariel Rubin 10:32 I think that I'm always been someone that's Personally, I've always been interested in first, I've always wanted to live anywhere. So for me living in Des Moines is as bizarre as living in Khartoum is as bizarre as living in, you know, London, or whatever. I think every place is can be really fascinating and can be really exciting, presents different challenges and different opportunities. So when Tanner and I spoke about it, I didn't get I didn't, wasn't fully I personally wasn't super serious about it at first. But again, he really did a great job kind of convincing, not convincing me even but just like kind of expressing what his ambitions were, when I saw his ambitions were really quite, quite big. And he has a really, he's got a really big vision for what he wants this to be, that was what got me excited, you know, it was kind of almost this, like, fantasy startup mentality, but he, you speak him, you'll kind of hear this and he's just got a real passion for this stuff. A really, like convinced me that this was more than just like coming to a place and filling out some press releases. And that's not what I wanted to do. And I wanted to, for me the condition that was like, conditions. But for me, the thing that was exciting about it was that I would have the opportunity to kind of run some of the social parts, the way that I thought could be effective. So having the freedom to do that, and really let it figure out, you know, give it a voice was what was really appealing to me. And again, the social part wasn't even a big part of my job description. But I was very keen, I really I said, if I'm going to do this job and do it well, I want to focus a great deal of attention on social media, because I believe that's where the energy is. And I believe that's also where audiences so they said, "Sure, go for it." Marc Gutman 12:07 Yeah, so I imagine you and I'm sure I've got this all wrong, but I imagine you skipping through the streets of Switzerland, maybe some chocolate in hand, and Ariel Rubin 12:15 Sure, yeah, fondue. Marc Gutman 12:17 Yeah, exactly. yodeling up the stairs, and you come home and you tell your wife. Yeah, we're moving. We're moving to Des Moines. Because I'm going to earn it. I don't know how that goes down. Or if you have a conversation around it, perhaps. But you know, and you're like, Hey, I really want to go to Des Moines and run communications for this convenience store. Like, what was that conversation like? Ariel Rubin 12:41 She, my wife is originally from the Midwest, and she grew up in Michigan. And so she was not necessary, I'd say, at first dying to move back to the Midwest, she sort of, I think, left for me for a reason. But her parents are in Milwaukee for they're pretty close. And we have again, we have a young child there. Now, our daughter's three, but at the time, it was really important for us for our daughter to spend more time with our family and be closer to family and friends here. So it worked out. I mean, it was not like, you know, it was and i think that you know, she and I have both grown really, really liked Des Moines and and actually find it quite cool. And I think before, obviously before COVID it was different, but now that it's COVID in a way every This is gonna sound bad, like every place is almost like a Des Moines. I don't know, there's not that much to do anywhere anymore. So I don't know if it was like, Yeah, okay, we're not in Switzerland anymore but actually Des Moines has a lot to offer. It's it's actually really fun. The people are lovely, the surprisingly good. I could go on and extol the virtues of Des Moines. But I don't know. My wife listens to this now, she's probably gonna be annoyed with me, but I think that yeah, it was you know, it was a fine conversation. She was she's down with whatever. To her credit. She rolled with it. Marc Gutman 13:49 Cool. So like, how would you describe the voice of come and go social media? Ariel Rubin 13:56 Um, yeah, I mean, I think you know, like I said, I guess when I started in the role, I was really keen to kind of look at the different platforms we were already on and see which we're working in how they're working together, what kind of voice you wanted to have for which. So for me, I naturally gravitated towards and as I do Twitter, because that, to me, it's the medium I understand the best I think, my demographic, my age, my sort of background at Twitter, sort of by era. And the first thing I did was I got clearance to kind of hire a social media specialist who and the person I hired is someone who absolutely kills it on Instagram, she was just like, I saw her on Instagram and the work she was doing and he had six times the followers that Kum & Go had on Instagram at the time. And I was like, I want someone who really wins at this platform to like run this and to me Instagram is visual is the most important visual platform we have on social media right now. It is where people are seeing your brand. I mean, that really is for me, it's Twitter's more about language and words and if you can be clever there and Instagram is really about sort of like what is your most beautiful life your most beautiful, whatever your most aspirational, living So she really gotten to use and gets Instagram just like perfectly and then she and I work really closely together on those platforms and really spend a lot of time talking about how we're gonna engage an audience what we're gonna do, we have work, she's, she's very different. She's 12 years younger than me, she's a totally different person than I than I am. But we get along really well. And I really enjoyed working with her because she's just got a great understanding of the sensibilities of the platform and aesthetics of it and voice for it. So our voice on Twitter is more of my voice, maybe in a way, it's, it's a bit cheeky, or it's kind of funny, I we don't punch down that sort of thing we try to maintain, but we try to really, you know, be part of the Zeitgeist and the part of the conversation that's happening. Like I said, I believe culture really emanates from Twitter, I think, no, I would say like, not everyone's on twitter at all. But every journalist is on Twitter. So even if my mom might not be on Twitter, she is now but my mom was on Twitter, every journalist that my mother reads or watches on CNN or whatever is on Twitter, and is developing their kind of opinions based on what they're seeing on Twitter. It's a really important platform. I mean, you know, Donald Trump understands extremely well. So it's up—to our own peril not to understand and maximize that platform, I think really well. Instagram, like I said, I think is a great place for that culture to kind of get spread further and into a younger demographic. And then the third thing is is TikTok. And we were again, really fortunate to have in our lead leadership that lets us kind of run with this stuff, we hired a 19 year old, fresh out of high school, basically, to go on TikTok because this person understood TikTok week, they had 200,000, they have 200,000 followers on Tiktok. And I said, we don't have a TikTok make it for us like go first. And their name is Evelyn Meyer, and they're brilliant. So between Evelyn, Nadia, and myself, we're kind of like the social media, I guess, brain trust of Kum & Go. And we each have a bit of a different voice. And I would say the other thing is that we we work really we're all really embedded, especially naughty, I really embedded with our associates and our colleagues and our team and our leaders. So we kind of get a sense I've been through a lot of trial and error, what that voice should be. And you know, when you hit a kind of a red line, or a third rail, you kind of know it, like there's some tweets that have definitely failed. And there's some Instagram posts that we've had to, you know, rethink, because ultimately, like, you've got to be a little bit, you've got to push the boundaries a little bit, you got to figure out where your audience is and where they want to go. And there's a lot of trial and error, you know, and that's sort of how we, we built it up. But the numbers, I think, you know, ultimately, we're judged by the numbers, it's not by what I think is funny. But by what Nadia thinks is attractive. It's really buy what our audience finds appealing. So for audience loves a photo of beautiful, we know it because the internet is the world's largest free focus group, right? It tells us very, very quickly what works and what doesn't. So we slowly over time really A/B tested it, I think a lot of different ideas and a lot of different pieces of content. And Nadia and I message each other every day, a million times ideas, and we've kind of workshop stuff on what's up what's appetite as we go. And, and that's sort of how we developed it. And again, none of this would be possible again, without can't stress this enough, without a leadership that totally trusted us. Trusted me and trusted Nadia and trusted Evelyn to do it. Because if there are layers, I think to social has to be immediate, and has to be reactive. And if there are layers of validations, and approvals and back and forwards, you really lose lose kind of the special thing about what social is, which is that's just happening so quickly, you just want to be part of it. And what happened yesterday is already is it might as well be five years ago, right? So by having the trust of our leadership by our bosses, and all the way up to the CEO, we're in a really fortunate space to be able to really try some fun stuff. And, you know, we fail tons. We also some really, really fun successes. Marc Gutman 18:31 Yeah, and you know, there were I can't, you know, start with that question was just that, like, you and your team have done something that's so to me, you know, challenging and unique, which is really giving a unique voice to something that is hard to give a voice to, you know, I think it's like a hard, hard product to brand sometimes, and you've done a really good job and maybe walk me through that process a little bit. I mean, did you say like, hey, like, Kum & Go is like the cool new, like, you know, whatever, and you're like you have a persona or a profile, or is it more organic than that? Ariel Rubin 19:08 You know, I, when I again, I'm not from the Midwest, but when I came here, I remember I said it in my interview. I lived in New York for a really long time. And in New York when I was in college, I went to NYU 15 years ago, whatever. I don't remember. Yeah, it was 15 Oh, my God. Anyway, 15 years ago, I was at NYU and we lived in. I lived in Brooklyn and we drank Pabst Blue Ribbon all the time. And we drank Pabst Blue Ribbon, not because it was a great beer and not because it was it was just the cool thing to drink. And it was $2 and you drank Pabst Blue Ribbon because we're like a posturing hipster. So I remember the how iconic Pabst Blue Ribbon was and it was like, for me it had this feeling of like, what real America is, right? And I think that so many things that feel like what real America is really come from this space in the Midwest, you know, whether it's Harley Davidson, Budweiser, john deere, Pabst Blue Ribbon, whatever, you know, Anheuser Busch, I'm I don't want a beer but equally to me come and go felt like it had that similar iconic or should have that similar iconic feeling of like a truly American thing. This is fourth generation family that from Iowa from, you know, always when I would came through and built this thing, you know, and that's like a really special, it was special, but it's still there, it's still their thing. It's not like owned by some conglomerate. It's just this family doing this thing. And I think that's like a really special thing. And I think, you know, I'm just cheesy, but like in a world where like, what is American is kind of very politicized and very, like, you know, divisive in a way. What's nice about the story that of this, and the product is like, it's just like a really nice thing. It's about like America that really welcomes everyone that opens its doors that supports black and brown communities, it supports gay communities. And to me and is this you know, as it's been around, has been there for its people for 60 years, and continues to do that. So I think that that was a really compelling story for me. And so, to be able to tell that story on social, we first needed to have an audience to tell it to so I think a lot of brands maybe make a mistake, but like, other brands just assume that people care about their thing as much as they care about their thing. And the thing is, you got to earn your audience's care and earn their trust, and you've got to you got to find them, you got to get them to care first. So we spent a long time getting people to care first, and then finding clever ways. You know, the strategy behind this whole thing is that I want to be funny on Twitter, because when I have something serious to say, I want to have someone to say it to. So if I can do a bunch of tweets that get me thousands of likes or retweets, that's great. Because the one time out of 10, that I'm going to tell you about why we're supporting this young LGBTQ group here that does incredible work with community, "Here's why you should support them," I want to be able to tell that to now I can tell that to 50,000 people, whereas a year ago, I only been told that to 20,000 people and the year before that only until that to 5000. So it slowly grows and builds that community and then people really start to recognize us for it. So I don't know that I kind of went on a tangent there. Marc Gutman 22:00 But it's great, you know, and it really seems to me that the leadership Kum & Go, assuming Tanner, really see this more as a platform not not not even social, but the business as a platform, and a enable a tool of change rather than you know, like, Hey, we, you know, yes, we're in the business of convenience stores. But really, it's that's a tool to do some other things and like, to me that, in general is a rare concept. But for a convenience store a gas station in the Midwest, I mean, you know, I think it's incredibly rare to be putting, you're not only to be backing a lot of these progressive causes, but to be like, shouting about it to be like forthright to be like front and center and saying, Hey, this is what we believe. And in no matter when you say that it's scary. But in a you know, you could be worried about polarizing a good subset of your audience or your customer base. Like where does like this just drive to be progressive come from? And then like, Do you ever get any backlash? Or do you ever like, Are you ever concerned? Like, concerns the wrong word? But yeah, do you ever get any backlash and push back on it? Ariel Rubin 23:15 Yeah. You know, I don't even know if they would admission, if they hear if they would describe it as progressive. I think they would just describe, you know, there's a very pragmatic thing in the Midwest, which I'm not familiar with, but I'm learning about which is that people just, I think that they really, it's, they just see it as human rights. They look at these issues. They look at human rights and science on these issues. And that's what we're talking about Mask use or whether we're talking about Black Lives Matter. We're looking at what is the human issue? And what is how is this issue impacting our community? And what does the science say? So I don't know if even Tanner or Kyle Kyle's, the CEO Tanner's the President, I don't know if either of them would necessarily describe themselves as company as progressive, I think they would describe it as compassionate, a welcoming, inclusive and open. And whatever that means, in today's 2020 COVID. Society, I think, inevitably becomes politicized. But ultimately, I really, I think they really would, in a way push back against it. But that being said, I think that we certainly we get we certainly received, we received comments. Sure, but I, you know, not as many as you would maybe think. I mean, really, it's been overwhelmingly I think, positive feedback we have and you know, I think one thing I really respect about Tanner in particular on this, and Kyle as well is that they're not afraid like you said it's applied, do you see this as a platform? They're not afraid, I mean, Tanner says all the time. You know, it's our job. It's on me. And it's not me. And him. He's a it's incumbent upon him to use that platform, that privilege that he was born into, and that he lives with every day, for some good and to really stand up as an ally. We just accepted an award last night from a LGBTQ organization, the Tanner spoke at it as an ally, its partner in progress. And Tanner literally just said that it said just that, and I think, again, quite why I joined I wouldn't have joined if that didn't exist here. To join, if they didn't, I'm thrilled that they let me use social as a way to amplify those messages and find creative ways tell those stories. And we've given some extraordinarily think, I would say progressive organizations and that are doing great work for Black Lives Matter and for our gay and lesbian trans communities. So, to me, it's a really exciting time to be part of a company, I Kum & Go again, I think, thanks to the leadership who have visited that, you know, that's, that's on them. So Marc Gutman 25:28 I think I think it is something though, that's unique, you know, I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is, you know, I would say, is a progressive area. But certainly, we don't have like a whole lot of convenience stores or gas stations that, you know, outside of Kum & Go that are like, Kum & Go. I also spend a good, you know, I'm from the Midwest, I'm from, you know, grew up in outside of Detroit spend a lot of time in northern Michigan, and there's, you know, you know, it's indicative of America, you know, it's split, and I would say that there is a lot of, you know, welcoming areas, and there's a lot that are less so and, you know, I again, I just you know, I find it very unique, and I don't want, you know, this to get lost, like how special this is that a gas station in the Midwest is really, you know, talking about these issues at the forefront of these issues. But were you gonna say something? Ariel Rubin 26:19 Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, I mean, we had a with this group that from last got this award from I remember, they said, they did a talk to our company. And they said this, that, you know, is it hear it when companies like Kum & Go say that, you know, publicly stand up as allies in a place like Iowa, the impact that has is extraordinary. And they said, I remember they gave us they were telling us how, like, you know, I'm from New York, I'm from the east coast. So for me, it was not as it felt like, Oh, yeah, this is just what people do. But actually here, it's not necessarily what every does. And it's not what every convenience store necessarily has. It's not just assumed. And so you have I'm not trying to, you know, top at my own peril and shoulders, you're too much I don't backs too much. But I think that, you know, they were like, you know, for a small town kid growing up in a farm community in Iowa who's gay. To hear that come and go welcomes them and stands up for is extremely powerful. But like, you can't underestimate how, how powerful that is in a place like Iowa and the communities you serve in, in Missouri and Arkansas, and all over I mean, frankly, so I that really stuck with me. And I think it's, you know, it's cool that we can do stuff like that, because there's a lot of people here who don't feel like their voices are heard. And I think if we can help help amplify voices and help show show up to this community, I think we're doing good work. Marc Gutman 27:39 This episode brought to you by Wildstory. Wait, isn't that your company? It is. And without the generous support of Wildstory, this show would not be possible. A brand isn't a logo, or a tagline. or even your product or a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product service or company. It's what people say about you, when you're not in the room. Wildstory helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve. So that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again. And this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about, reach out @ www.wildstory.com. And we'd be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show. So kind of getting back to like when you decided to come aboard, I mean, with management. Was there this vision to have social be a core part of the communication strategy? And? And if so, just kind of like what were they thinking? Because again, like, it all kind of makes sense now it seems really like, like it fits now like, but like I go back to that probably that moment where that had to be risky, like, you know, no business I've ever worked with has too much money. No business I've ever worked with has too many resources, right? Like every decision is always like, "Where can we you know, make best use of our limited resources?" And so just to have that, like, thought, like, we're gonna invest in this area, like, can you kind of walk me through that a little bit? And what that looks like? Ariel Rubin 29:28 Yeah, well, I mean, you know, the funny thing I guess is that it's, it's not a big investment. It's organic content, by and large investment was in was in me and my, and in our social media specialist, and then in our TikTok kind of intern, the three of us is it and actually we're actually probably a lot cheaper than the agency that we were paying to do it before. So we're not, you know, it's not I do everything. We do it all in house. We do it all on free, Canva software, and it's free. You know, we don't really put money into from to promote content, like the content that does well as well because the audience finds it and and we've we've done a few campaigns with a few different smaller kind of agencies, one in particular, that was really cool and fun for us. But these are small campaigns. These are not like big, multi, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollar things. It's not at all like that. I mean, really, to me, what's social, I always want social to be a space where we can experiment and your point like no company is ever like, we make too much money. Like, I want to have that freedom to do that, not because I'm a narcissist, although it doesn't hurt and I am. But it's because I think that we can do really cool stuff that we can really find a new audience. And again, only this company where we're family run, so we don't have you know, we don't report to there's not a bunch of different stakeholders that that we have to report to, you know, the, our stuff, we don't have a store, we're not publicly traded. So there's not some stock price that I have to maintain or something you know, that a tweet could sink or something like, I am fortunate again, like a very patient tolerant and open minded leadership team. I remember there was one time, there was a tweet that we had done, I forget what ages ago and Kyle Krauss the CEO, who's on Twitter is doing a great job on Twitter, that he had this reply where someone's like, I can't believe they like let him do this. And Kyle replied, like, isn't, I don't understand what he does sometimes, but I'll always support it. And I think, as a leader, what an incredible gift right? Like or as sort rather, as for me, what an incredible gift have a leader like that, who he just trust that I'll do an okay job or that might have been I'm trying to get him to get his company to a good place, there's a need to understand like, what the meme is, or the joke, or the particular cultural thing I'm trying to get at and that maybe I miss on. He's simply saying, like, Here, you have this space to play him, go for it. So I'm really applauding them for letting me again, letting me take the risk with it. But I don't put that much. It's not very expensive, because it's really just like, you know, Nadia shoots all the photos. She's brilliant, like I do, you know, they were just kind of like a, where I see a sort of an in house creative team, really to be honest with you. And I think that that's what makes it kind of again, that's what makes it fun. Marc Gutman 32:08 Yeah. And so how do you measure success? Man, I know, you probably measure by some some typical social metrics, number of followers engagement, but are you able to track back like increase in revenue and things like that back to your efforts? Ariel Rubin 32:24 Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, yeah, there's the there's the standards. There's the standard, you know, ROI in terms of our engagement, we look at our engagement, we look at our follower growth, we look at, you know, we look at what's working, what isn't and we ideator iterate based on that. And then we beyond sort of social success. When we look in store, we look at certain campaigns that we have been really kind of getting behind and I mean, I can tell you, for example, we just launched all day breakfast pizza. So we did breakfast pizza till 10. Now we do breakfast pizza all day, I don't remember when it stops. But when it kitchen closes, basically. And we did a fun play on that on social and, and we've seen like a major bump in power breakfast pizza. So now, it's always hard, I think to do causation and correlation with social, we also have been there is another side of Kum & Go that does marketing that does, it does do marketing, the more traditional marketing side, we don't do it at all. I'm a comms person. And I run this organic social scientists in the tire of the park side, my boss, Ben, Vice President marketing communication leads that body of work. So that also exists as an aside, but I think for us, when I look at what successes there, I see stuff like breakfast pizza selling, and I see us pushing it. I like to think that there's a nice correlation there. I think another thing we do, you know, we try to find ways to bring our online energy offline. So we do stuff with fanny packs. We made these fanny packs that have been super popular. We can do giveaways. We just did another giveaway on Twitter yesterday. 500. I didn't you know, funny thing like last person to retweet this gets a fanny pack. And it's gotten retweeted like 500 times. Again, like, we bring those fanny packs to store openings. We had one yesterday and Omaha kids show up at 6am to get these they're gone by 630. So we try to make cool stuff to retain a cool audience to find that the cool kids who are out there who want to come get it and I'd say the biggest example, I think a success online that we've been able to see is we had a really fun collaboration with Anheuser Busch, where we made a Budweiser, they let us make this incredible Budweiser Kum & Go drink a Budweiser shirt with all the proceeds going to a charity for for to benefit veterans. And that didn't we sold them out like it did super, super well. And that was like a really fun social play. We sold out entirely. We sold them online now that actually we had some in stores in another run because it did so well. But stuff like that is just like a really, it's a really fun way to start bringing that stuff offline and showing that success of that energy and where those audience that that audience exists online. And then we can kind of start bringing them into the store. And we're going to continue to do things like that both in store activations and other online. Merch plays, basically. Marc Gutman 34:47 Yeah. And so you've talked a lot about the successes that you've had, and certainly can feel your enthusiasm and energy for what you do. But like what's hard about it? You know what's hard about this endeavor that you're undertaking with communications at Kum & Go? Ariel Rubin 35:03 Um, I mean, what's hard about it? I guess, you know, they've definitely been they've been successes. And they've been total failures and busts. And I don't even mean it like that. Failed forward or anything. I just failed. Like, it just I just did stuff that sucked. And was your worst one. What was your biggest? biggest failure? Yeah, no, our biggest one. And we have a really great failure, which was the, we did Nadia and I did a post a tweet. Basically, I we were both new here. And I'm not from that. I don't really know anything about sports in general. And I certainly don't know anything about college sports. But we did a tweet about the cyclones and the hot guys are the two teams here, college football, and it was one of the teams lost. And so the team remember, we had it like it was a good image of a team getting pushed down this, like spread on Reddit and spread all over. And people were absolutely livid. I mean, they were taking photos of themselves cutting up there Kum & Go and rewards card and tweeting it and calling for boycotts. And it was like this huge fear. And we had like emergency meeting and people who had never, I mean, who had like, I had, like, it reached like the far reaches of the internet in Iowa. And it was like a real And anyway, the news covered it. I was quoted in Des Moines Register, which is I'm very proud of them have this on my resume at the time says, Twitter is hard says Kum & Go spokesperson Ariel Rubin. And I was very proud of that, quote, because you know, the end of the day Twitter is hard. And frankly, I learned a lesson which is in the Midwest, maybe, you know, don't talk about politics, or sports or religion. So you know, stay out of those three. So I, we don't talk about college football anymore. And I frankly, didn't even really understand that. But I learned from that, you know, we got a lot of engagement out of it. We got a lot of followers. But you know, obviously you don't want to do that at the expense of your base and your people. And I didn't want you know, I remember our legal our general counsel was like I dad called me is like my dad's 90. And he's like, what are you doing on Twitter? He's like, my dad doesn't even know what Twitter is. What happened? So, again, credit to everyone we work with, and everyone above me who allowed us to continue going and didn't change, do we didn't have to change, really anything. We just kind of, you know, we learned we learned a really big lesson there on that. So I think I think failures like that are super important that because you really do you learn as you develop this, but it's like a year and a half ago, we we were developing our voice and we're figuring out where those where those third rails were. And we certainly learned. Well, I mean, I got emails, I got death threats, like it was I've never I've worked in on the most hot button issues in the world, Israel, Palestine, whatever. Nothing compares to be animosity, and just deep, deep rage I got on the because of this, this one tweet. So I felt bad. And we apologize. We moved on. Marc Gutman 37:46 Yeah, as I mentioned, I'm a Midwest guy, and you don't mess with cross state rivals and college football. That's just a No, no. But like, as you were telling me that story again, like, I'm just sitting here, buddy, like, Oh, no, like, I can only imagine like, early in your your career here. And like you're already stepping in it. I mean, we were freaking out or did right away was management. Like, look, we got you. But we got to work this out. I mean, how does that go down? Like you're creating quite a ruckus early in your career? Ariel Rubin 38:16 I know. Yeah. Again, man, I don't know, I got lucky to have the management. I got like a, you know, I wrote them an email, I was like, I got some bad news. They're very cool. They're very, they're very relaxed about it. Like they, you know, they had faith in the process. You know, I think, something that I learned, maybe from that, but also, I think some in general, and this year has been a good example of that, as yours just been so crazy, I think news is that these cycles, if you I think it's always a good lesson, as a comms person, remember that, like, the outrage cycle will pass. And not only will it pass, no one will have any idea what it even was in three days. And if you can weather that storm, because everyone's everyone's, I believe everyone's attention span has just become so withered by the kind of onslaught of news and media, and then, frankly, like terrifying kind of things that are happening on a daily basis that the brains have really kind of like goldfish out and are really incapable of like handling too much just constant stimulus. So I think that where the again, the lesson from there was, was like, if you can say that you have to, I think if you can weather a storm that you can recognize that this too, will pass. And it's important always have perspective, in the midst of a kind of social media crisis or any media crisis, which is like, really, the Eye of Sauron really moves on rather quickly these days. And it's, it's important to remember that even at the time when you feel like oh, my God, this is a cataclysm and you know, our sales didn't change for the negative, we follow it. I followed it through I followed up on it with like our analytics team, and we looked at it and sales and stuff and the impact ultimately was practically non existent. So again, fortunate to have to have leadership and colleagues that that were at the time. Really very cool with it. Yes, I was. I was I was very nervous. Marc Gutman 39:56 And was that the strategy to ride the storm? Or did you have to kind of do a mea culpa and apologize, are we ever did that look like? Ariel Rubin 40:03 we did a mea culpa, we did a mea culpa. And it was actually my boss. It was her. I was like her first week, and she just been hired. So she really, I felt really more bad for her because I'd maybe been there for four or five months. And she was really new and was like, Oh, my God, you know, through this ad or like the first week. So we did do a call, but I, and I think it was probably the you know, I was he was a good thing to do kind of diffused in a bed. You know, I said, People really upset I felt really badly hurt by that. Now it was, like I said, it's never our intention. never actually anyone was attention to find it funny. I knew it is the funny joke at the expense of another audience, you know, so, you know, you live and learn? I don't know. Marc Gutman 40:48 You know, so shifting a little bit when we first spoke, you said something to me that that resonated and it was a paraphrasing, or maybe not, but it was something to the effect of socials where the conversation is, you know, can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, like, what do you mean by that? Ariel Rubin 41:04 I think that every day I wake up, and I work for Kum & Go, and all I'm trying to do is get my job is to compete with every single thing that you can do on your phone. My job is compete with the text message from your, your wife, or the photos of your kid, or the Amazon Prime membership, or Netflix or every other brand in the world. I'm not just competing with Kwik Trip, or Casey's or whatever, I'm competing as a brand for your attention and I'm competing with the Red Cross and competing for literally anything and everything. And I think that, you know, we, I just want to get, I want to get five seconds of your time today to think about her coming up. That's funny, or they did a funny tweet, or Wow, they have a great Instagram, or I got to go there and pick up a hot dog because that was awesome, whatever. Like, I'm trying to get that little slice of time. And so I think that when I say that, that's where the conversations, literally I look at audience behavior. And even now, I mean, now accelerated by the pandemic, but we look at social use and and can phone use and it's it's through the roof, it's only growing. And so as we continue on with very connected digitally native younger audiences, or consumer bases, we're only going to continue to be focused there. So it's why I see something for example, like TikTok, I have no real conception of and no real understanding of, but I know is where conversation is happening or culture is kind of created. I know, I want us to be a part of that. And I want us to be a part of that in a way that's authentic, both to the platform and to our brand. So I don't want to be me on TikTok talking because it's inauthentic for me because I literally don't get it. And I would look like the 35 year old. So I want to find ways to to kind of be part of this conversation tonight. I think, you know, social is the watercooler of our time. And there's I don't know where everyone else is. But they're all there constantly. And I think probably much to our society's detriment, but is what it is. Marc Gutman 42:54 Is that why you do what you do? Ariel Rubin 42:56 I mean, I think I'm a product of of our broken brain, social media generation. Yeah, I mean, I was probably, you know, and I, I find it really exciting because I think as when I was younger, I wanted to be a journalist, because I thought that was a really compelling way to kind of tell stories and share news with people. And I think, as I got into journalism, and I had a terrible career as a journalist, I wasn't very good. But I think that, as I got into it, I realized that early on that, you know, what was really, for me really exciting was the kind of constant flow of information that was happening in places like Twitter. And at the time, Facebook when I was younger, and I think that was, I've always found that really addictive. I mean, again, for better or for worse, it certainly has ruined my ability to like, read a book from start to finish. But I really I appreciate and I think I'm okay, a fairly decent at cracking the code of understanding how to get other people interested in what I think is cool. And that's what I try to do at Kum & Go. Marc Gutman 43:50 Yeah. And so like, what's the biggest challenge for you and your team right now, as it pertains to social and kind of how you see the world? Ariel Rubin 43:57 I mean, I think, you know, it's always a challenge in trying to be relevant, and try to maintain relevance, as always, because again, I think, I think, frankly, our strategies, and this matters, like, I don't know how much I don't put much stock into that, because the platforms are changing so quickly, algorithms are changing so quickly, the audience behavior is changing every day. I don't even plan to single tweet in my life. I don't have a I don't have a tweet, right. I don't know what I'm gonna tweet today. I don't know what I'll tweet tomorrow. I don't know what Nadia is going to put on Instagram, we, we do it by that. And that is a on purpose. Because I believe to be truly effective. You want to know, you want to wake up, go on Twitter for five minutes, see what people are talking about and then start developing what that conversation is going to be and how you're going to be a part of it. So I think that the challenges are always in that process. It's tough, like to kind of do that and to maintain, I think, an energy to kind of keep up with it. It's kind of exhausting. It's like there's always that kind of that challenge. And then I think more broadly, you know, it's something you touched on earlier, but it's like, we always want to think about how we can I think show success and show that we're able to not only just get lolz on Twitter or likes on an Instagram post, but actually how we can convert and drive that traffic into stores. That's always the challenge. And I always find that chall—I find, you know, I've been doing this job for a year and a half, I still find that challenge be really rewarding and fun. Marc Gutman 45:15 Yeah. And so, you know, do you have any advice that you could give anyone who is either starting their career and social and or looking to add this to their brand? Who might just be starting a little bit flat footed or don't don't know where to go from here? Ariel Rubin 45:31 Yeah, I mean, I think a few things. I think, I think consistency is really key with this stuff. I don't think, you know, I think it's, when you're building an audience, and I'm building an audience, we're all trying to build audiences. And it's really hard to build an audience like the hardest thing to do, because I'm one store out of a billion stores and one and, you know, one voice out of a billion. So I think, really, I think, consistently kind of like going out every day, and pushing and not getting deterred when you don't find easy, easy or quick success, because I think it takes a long time. And the other thing I would, I would say is, I see this actually a lot like, I think if you're starting your career, you're young, in your career, you're young, you have such an advantage. And tomorrow, in terms of this kind of world, because you grew up in it, you grew up immersed in it, you grew up, you know, I grew up with a dial up modem and AOL and it's just a different world, things are changing so quickly. And I think you grew up with Twitter, Twitter's around for what, 15, 20 years now, like, you know, that's part of and you're 20 years old, like it's just, it's always been there for you. So, you know, the language that you have that you speak in is, is you're already at such a competitive advantage to someone like me, because you just get it better, and you understand it more and you're quicker. So I think, frankly, use your youth I think is an advantage what I'd say to young people starting out and I tell people who are older who are maybe more gatekeepers or leadership positions. I always say this though, it's just like, you have to find people, trust them, and then let them do whatever they want. And that's it to me, it's fine to people that are good at this stuff. And then don't try to ruin it by like, like, Yeah, but where's my brand go? Or like, what about putting this in the photo, like, let the people that are really, really clever at at figuring out a platform or, you know, under understanding an audience, let them do that work for you. And really trust them to do it. Because that I think, is where certainly we've seen and I've seen Nadia and Evelyn are my two kind of colleagues really extraordinary success and some really really fun stuff happen. Marc Gutman 47:18 And so outside of your mobile phone, what's your favorite social media tool? Ariel Rubin 47:24 Outside of my phone? Like what's my favorite tool to—? Marc Gutman 47:28 Just mean like use your phone to tweet and take photos and things like that. But yeah, so like, to me that would be my like, I was just trying to like, you know, get you to not say my phone. Like, what's your favorite tool? Ariel Rubin 47:40 Like but like even like platform that I'm on or— Marc Gutman 47:44 No no no no like actual tool for for doing your job. And I'm hoping to— Ariel Rubin 47:48 Literally just my phone, I don't have anything else. I don't have a single other thing. I have this laptop that I'm talking to you on. I hate it. So I it is truly, truly just my phone. I don't use a camera, I don't use I used to use a to shoot and I mean, I edit and shoot stuff. I you know, another thing I would say generally, it's like, learn how to do everything, at least a little bit well, or at least basic, you know, like learn how to shoot, learn how to edit photo, and video learn final cut or, you know, or Adobe Premiere. I think having basic knowledge, that's not a POC, I want to learn how to do podcast, no idea how to get like, think learning all that stuff is really important. So I can do a little bit of all of that. But the Yeah, I just use my phone for anything. Marc Gutman 48:27 Incredible. No, it's good. Like, I'm a tool collector, you know, so like, some tool. Um, but actually my favorite tool is probably Facebook Creator Studio, because I like that I can you know, do it with Insta and load up, you know, schedule posts and things like that. Before it was only like you can't do or you have to have some weird, weird thing. So yeah, so that's what I like the most. But you know, there's people out there like, you know, Hootsuite and Buffer and all this stuff. But yeah, that's not me. I'm on a more like one to one. Ariel Rubin 49:01 Right on. Yeah, yeah. So you know, as we thank you guys, we come to a close and towards the end of our time here, like what does the future look like for for you in Kum & Go and the social team like where do you think this is all going? I have no idea. But I'm you know, I think again, like this has been the year I'm like any that I've ever I've ever experienced that, you know, earlier, we asked me how I got from Switzerland to here and I think I was working on Ebola at the Red Cross and things like that. And I was like, I'm done with all that, like, I want something that's going to be light and I want to live in Iowa and I want to relax and I ended up coming here and having like the most politically and sort of, you know, intense it's been an intense year and you know, dealing with you know, COVID-19 has been super intense. So I, I hope I hope the future for coming go in future for the country and the planet is one which sort of we'd get Oh, grab a grip on this pandemic and can kind of go back to it. I don't think we're going back to normal ever But I think go back to, I don't know, pretty, you know, it's content that's a bit more fun and a bit lighter. Because it's just been a really it. It's been a tough year for a lot of people. And I hope that for Kum & Go in general that I, you know, again, I think that I think we have a really exciting plan for what this company, how this company wants to be ended up. It's been around for 61 years, it's gonna be around for a lot longer. And I think there's a lot of interesting ideas for how you make and how you reimagine and re envision what convenience looks like in the 21st century, especially post COVID, I would say. So I think it'd be interesting to see what this company does and where it goes. And I'm excited to be part of it and hopefully, continue driving really interesting conversation and building an ever bigger ever growing audience. Marc Gutman 50:39 Yeah. And I kind of alluded to that was my last question. But you've made me think of one more. You know, I think that there's something really interesting that has happened that there's this shift where people are looking to brands, for their news, they're looking to brands for their information, they're looking to brands to like, how do you feel about COVID? How do you feel about politics? How do you feel about what's happening in the world? I think that's, like, a real, profound shift that that is not happening has happened. You know, you know, and, you know, so how do you? How do you approach that? How do you handle that, when so many of your community, so many of your of your audience, your customers are looking to you for commentary on like, big topics like that? Ariel Rubin 51:26 Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's, it's scary, that that's where we are as a society, I don't think it bodes well for us. But leaving that aside, I think that brands have a responsibility to be good corporate systems and be good people and kind of be a good, good corporate citizens. And I think that this isn't a new burden, maybe for brands. And I think, you know, I think the brands that succeed, and the brands that we're going to talk about in 5, 10, 20, 50 years, we the brands that took this kind of moment seriously and took that responsibility seriously, and and, frankly, are the ones that I think that we're on the right side of history. So again, I I'd say that I wouldn't work for a company that I didn't think was on the right side of history when it comes to these really important issues. And I'm proud to work for a company that is has been pretty explicit with where they stand on this stuff. So I think yeah, I think it's a brave new world. Marc Gutman 52:21 And that is Ariel Rubin, communications director and social media mastermind at Kum & Go. I hope you felt like you got a social media master class, because I certainly did. And did you hear what he said? It really doesn't take much to do social right? To build an audience to create a platform. But it does take time. It does take mistakes. And it takes a whole lot of trust between internal collaborators. And of course your audience. Business is the platform for social good for creating corporate citizenship as Ariel put it. So what are you waiting for? Build a social media team, have some fun, change the world. A big thank you to Ariel Rubin and the team as Kum & Go. Continue to be that voice for your community that might not be able to shout loud enough for themselves. We will link to all things Ariel Rubin and Kum & Go in the show notes. Please make sure to go follow them. Check out their socials, you might just learn something. Well, that's the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstory.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS so you'll never miss an episode. I like big stories and I cannot lie, you other storytellers can't deny. Transcribed by https://otter.ai