Gabrielle Faulkner on Youth Culture and Marketing

For the first Lopo interview, I sat down with Gabrielle Faulkner, Sr. Manager of Media, Creative and Content at Barcel USA. 

Gabrielle does it all. She’s part Creative Director, part Media Director, and part Data Strategist at a snack brand coveted by Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Gabrielle’s career began in media buying, where she learned the fundamental media principles that still hold true today. From there, she joined Hotels.com, where she supported in-house media before transitioning to Expedia Group as a Communications Planner. 

To set the scene, Gabrielle joins me virtually from the patio of a coffee shop in Dallas, Texas. She breezily drops expert wisdom between taking sips of her iced latte and sharing observations about the environment around her. She’s cool and confident, and her conversation style embodies her desire to “empower people to have fun.” This is a fitting mission for someone that drives marketing for a brand that excels at maintaining cultural relevance among the youth.

Interview

First, who is your target audience? 

Our target audience is Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Our product and brand always needs to have a spirit of the youth. But as much as we are targeting Gen Z and Gen Alpha, we actually have what I call a reverse conundrum. We built a brand respected by Gen Z and really owned by Gen Z but
one of the things we're trying to build now, actually, is the reverse. How do we go from owning Gen Z to now owning a gen pop audience? 

I imagine that that's a tricky balance to strike. You don't want to ostracize your core audience, but you also want to expand. And from my own research, I found that this brand does a lot of weird and wonderful and kind of subversive work that I can imagine might be off-putting to an older audience. But they've got money to spend and they like to snack as well. 

One of the things that I really try to lean into in my personal life, but also in my work is the idea that youth leads culture. The youth are always the ones that are going to lead the change, and also the trajectory and the culture. 
So that's how we have to build our brand, right? We're going to continue to keep youthful energy, but ensure that it feels inclusive in a way that captures the attention of the masses.

Talking about Gen Z specifically, there's so much noise right now on social media and in the world and everyone is vying for a piece of their attention. How do you keep their attention in such a noisy world? 

You do what they do. It's really easy that we see the brands that win, right?
Brands like Wendy's or McDonald's in the QSR World, they're leading and winning with Gen Z because they act like a part of the culture. They're talking to them in the language that they understand and they use. They're using the kind of jokes and colloquialisms that those targets typically use. So they’re relatable.

How do you stay tapped into youth culture and make sure that the work that you're putting out really resonates them with them and feels authentic?

I love to test and learn. We often have creatives on our team that are young and we trust their voices. We trust them to help us understand what people are talking about. We search the web and we're always looking forward. We utilize our social listening tools. 
And then we just try stuff. 

I know that you explore and go out into the field as well. You were just at a Zack Fox show with the youth, so I imagine that's helpful.

I do try to stay young and I also just listen. [At work], we had a conversation with some 13 and 14 year old boys that really helped us understand them. And they almost check you in a way. You might think your product is the coolest thing but when you truly ask them how they think about it and how they interact with it, that's truly the most enlightening. So I try to stay grounded by talking to the youth, but also truly, I think the best thing you can do is just ask, “how do you use my product?”

It sounds like you have a really strong relationship with your audience. Can you talk a little bit about the feedback loop and how you're soliciting feedback? And then how you’re putting that feedback into practice?

Marketing is like two things, right? It's part product development and part communication. So the feedback loop starts with utilizing our social listening tools, grabbing all of the comments, seeing what people are saying online, looking at consumer reviews. Before the feedback goes to communication, it has to go to Product. You have to make sure that you are evaluating how people are seeing your product. If you pass the check, yes, we have the right product, then we can move on to communication to say, "What are we not communicating well or right about our products that the audience needs, but they don't understand that we have.”

To pivot slightly, how do you evaluate which risks are worth taking? 

I can't take credit for this but our CEO says there there's two kinds of decisions. The ones you can come back from and the ones you can’t. The things that we're spending a lot of budget on, things like big productions… those are the ones that you can't come back from. 
So we have to make sure that those things are absolutely working. But organic social posts are things that we can definitely come back from. And if you get it right, then the things that you can play with actually start to inform the things that you can be more serious about. 
So, for example, if I'm playing with organic social posts and then one pops off and I get a viral moment from it, then maybe I decide that should be a part of our ad or maybe that's something we should spend some real money behind. 

Finally, if I came to you and I said, “Gabrielle, I'm starting a business. I have zero dollars, but I'm trying to get my name out there,” what's one recommendation you might give me?

The first thing I tell people to do is be clear about who your audience is.  And then what value do you or your product bring? 
If you can get really clear on that, you'll do really well at communication. That's all people want to hear from you. People don't necessarily dislike ads, people dislike information that doesn't relate to them. But if you're clear about what your product is and what value it’s going to bring to someone, then you've got it. I think what's important to understand is that oftentimes you won't know that yourself. You have to go out and see how people are using your product or your service. I think that is the biggest unlock for small businesses. Everything after that is all the fun stuff.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.