EP+Co Leads Clients to Social Stardom by Capitalizing on Cultural Opportunities for Real-Time Engagement

With 25 percent of consumers basing their purchasing decisions on how culturally involved a brand is, aligning yours with the events and trends that define society today is critical. But how do you actually make that happen without coming off as tone-deaf or trying or trite?

EP+Co knows it all comes down to being strategic and identifying the right opportunities for your brand to connect with culture. Good thing we designed CORE, or Cultural Opportunities for Real-time Engagement, to do just that.?

A team of dedicated creatives and strategists, CORE scrubs media channels on the daily to identify cultural conversations our clients can own. The key being, in authentic, smart and exceptionally entertaining ways—ways that stay true to the brands’ ethos.?

“CORE is EP+Co’s answer to ensuring our clients don’t miss out on opportunities to say something or do something audiences will resonate with,” explained Lance Ford, VP, Creative Director and head of CORE. “We watch what’s happening in the world, what’s trending where, and we seek out opportunities for the right clients to chime in on social media, at the right time, in the right ways.”

After years of success leading the creation of viral, culturally inspired social posts for EP’s former clients at Denny’s, Lance Ford has a new role. At the helm of CORE, he’s working to identify opportunities for more brands to deliver buzz-worthy, trend-focused content.        

No stranger to helping brands capitalize on culture, Ford was Creative Director of the team that led Denny’s (EP+Co’s former client) to social media greatness just a few years ago.?

From nearly breaking the internet with a pancake version of the once-trending ‘zoom-in’ meme to calling on father/son duo DJ Pryor and Kingston to star in a Father’s Day commercial right after the pair’s hit ‘conversation ’ went viral, Ford and team made culture work for Denny’s.

EP+Co’s ‘zoom-in’ meme for Denny’s became the diner’s most popular tweet of all time.        

“We used cultural opportunities for real-time engagement to give Denny’s a relevant persona that really got people excited, ” Ford mentioned. So excited, in fact, the chain saw a 150 percent increase in engagement within two years between 2013 and 2015.?

But Denny’s isn’t the only brand that’s benefited from CORE.?

Gearing up for the release of their movie Deadpool 2, 20th Century Fox looked to EP+Co for a social media campaign devised to leverage cultural opportunities—and boost box-office sales.?

After mastering Deadpool’s distinctive wise-guy voice, EP teams pegged popular events and moments the beloved anti-hero might actually talk about. Then, they got loud.?

‘Deadpool,’ or rather, our wittiest writers, live-tweeted the entire Super Bowl, wished Betty White a happy birthday and earned lots of attention for the film.?

And, knowing Deadpool 2 would have to compete with Avengers: Infinity War during its opening weekend, EP+Co spun the coinciding release dates in Fox’s favor —by having Ryan Reynolds tweet about a rejection letter Deadpool received from Tony Stark.

Realizing an opportunity to use the competing release date of Avengers: Infinity War in Deadpool 2’s favor, EP+Co asked Ryan Reynolds to tweet about his character's rejection from the Avengers.        

CORE doesn’t work with planned opportunities exclusively, though.

“What makes this team so unique,” said Tyler Williams, Associate Director of Cultural Opportunities, is that we don’t just ideate around scheduled events, like holidays and game days. We also recognize when?something is about to start trending out of nowhere, and we move incredibly fast to insert our clients into the conversation,” Williams noted.

A seasoned social strategist, Tyler Williams brings a wealth of experience to the CORE team as Associate Director of Cultural Opportunities.        

But it’s not enough just to have your finger on the pulse of pop-culture 100 percent of the time.?

Ford and Williams understand the level of strategy it takes to plug different brands into different conversations. That’s why CORE works on the upfront to establish and define the cultural categories each client can speak to in a decidedly genuine way.?

Recently, the team found success in such a strategy when they turned a hashtag holiday into an ownable moment for Havertys Furniture—giving the brand a voice on National Coffee Day.

CORE connects brands with cultural moments in ways that make sense. For example, the team turned a hashtag holiday into this ownable moment for Havertys Furniture.         

“Our ‘Ode to the Coffee Table’ spot is a great example of how we can link a brand to a seemingly unrelated moment in culture,” explained Ford. “In this case, we knew most brands would use National Coffee Day as an opportunity to talk about beverages. People weren’t thinking about products outside of coffee, but we were. We connected the dots for Havertys and used the day to talk about coffee’s supporting character—the coffee table—in a really natural way.”

Perfect for companies of every size and type, CORE has a demonstrated ability to get brands recognized for being culture-conscious in the most original ways possible. And they’re currently accepting new clients.

If you’re ready to find ground on which to stand when speaking into popular topics, and benefit from the publicity that comes from doing so, contact us today . And connect with us on?LinkedIn ,?Instagram ,?Facebook? and?Twitter.