Ian Culver from Culver Brand Design has been devoted to defining a unique brand voice since the start of the collaboration with Bays English Muffins from Bimbo Bakeries USA. His goal has been to find the perfect blend of artistic vision and deep data analysis to shape an unbeatable content strategy.
Bringing Emplifi on board, his creative team has consolidated disparate data sources under one platform to quickly identify best-performing content and trends. This instant data access puts audience engagement at the center of content creation, and helps drive key business KPIs – where creative and analytics yield consumption.
"Emplifi is an invaluable partner and has helped us finish up one of our best quarters yet," said Culver. "One of Bays English Muffins posts has hit over 54 million impressions!"
Note: reach was 21 million, impressions were 54 million.
"It's all about effective collaboration between Culver Brand Design, Bimbo Bakeries USA, and Emplifi. We all are committed to putting the best product out there. Not for us, but for our audience," said Ian Culver.
Taking subjectivity out of the creative process
Diving into the data, Culver was at first surprised to discover that the best-performing content pieces were different from what he initially expected.
"We always thought our posts had to be gutsy, but our two best posts are really cutesy," he said. "Another surprise was our Bays recipe campaign. We expected 'Make mini pizzas with your kids' sort of content to resonate the most, but in fact, our best performing pieces were elevated meal experiences, which look so like a work of art
Culver made data on audience engagement central to content ideation. He says it is all about taking "subjectivity out of creativity." This approach has allowed the Culver Brand Design team to replicate successes more easily, while still leaving ample space for new and bold ideas.
An audience-first content strategy, step by step
To reach such impressive results, the Culver Brand Design team started with a meticulous analysis of key competitors' top content. They grouped the best-performing content into 15 different "creative buckets" that served as a data-sourced inspiration for their own content strategy.
Inspired by industry best practices, Culvers' team applied the learnings to drive their own creative process.
During content execution, they leveraged data provided by Emplifi, practically in real-time, to enhance their strategy and drive fast, tangible results.
Month after month, they reviewed content performance, tried out different formats, and moved forward with what was working the best to carve out their own social media identity.
"Emplifi's Social Marketing Cloud drives what we do and makes our brand voice so powerful. Instead of looking at macro data, we are able to drill into specifics and find what actually resonates with our followers.", said Ian Culver
