Andy Walsh and a co-speaker argue that brands win by acting like real people: admitting mistakes, showing genuine behavior, and dropping the corporate mask. They trace this through the 2023 Ocean Spray viral moment, where a man on an electric skateboard drinking cranberry juice sparked Mick Fleetwood and the CEO to replicate the stunt, turning one spontaneous clip into a multi-layered brand story.
Chapters
became a movement because people lean in when somebody's life gets messed up. They're like, ooh, what's going to happen here? But if you show up like a person and not a brand and you, you know, admit that you made a mistake, but then you do good, then, you know, that lands well. So be, be more human.
So good. And that nice little sink into my next topic, which is all anchored around trying to keep up with what's relevant today versus building in perpetuity from a storytelling perspective. And I look back to, if everyone remembers the Ocean Spray thing that happened where there was a guy who was traveling to work on an electric skateboard and he was filming himself and he was drinking Ocean Spray while he was going and he was playing Fleetwood Mac song. I can't remember what it was. And then Mick Fleetwood got in on it as well and did the same thing and replicated it. And then Ocean Spray then jumped on the wagon and had their CEO do the same thing.