In 2007, Popchips was introduced, and quickly revolutionized the snack food space by introducing a better-for-you alternative to chips. The company is still an Indy favorite, with a cult-like following.

Today, I’m here to talk smart snacking marketing strategies with Jennifer Santiago, the Vice President of Strategy and Communications for Popchips. Hi, Jennifer!

Jennifer S.: 00:27 Hi!

Sherri Langburt: 00:28 So nice to have you today, to join us.

Jennifer S.: 00:32 Very excited, and thank you for having me.

Sherri Langburt: 00:35 So, yeah. I guess we could just jump right in. I’m really curious, you’ve been with the brand, Popchips, for five years. I know they were one of the first to really get involved with influencers, because we’ve worked with them.

Can you share your first recollection of when influencers came onto the scene?

Jennifer S.: 00:51 Yeah. To be honest, I remember 10 to 12 years ago, when bloggers were, I felt … I myself discovered them on my own. That was, to me, the initial people who were every day, typically still had normal jobs, were posting stuff on the Internet. Then, I think, in the last five years, Instagram became more well known and more mainstream.

Jennifer S.: 01:21 When it went to another level, and moved more towards the Instagram from the blogger world.

Sherri Langburt: 01:30 Yeah, I remember that too. That’s when we actually launched our agency. I was working at Weight Watchers at the time, and it was just all these brands talking about Mommy bloggers. Just a very interesting evolution.

How does influence marketing play into the role of Vice President of Strategy for the brand?

Jennifer S.: 01:56 So, as of now … I used to be more in the weeds of the day-to-day, and now it’s more of the approval process. So, we’re viewing people we want to work with, approving copy and post.

Jennifer S.: 02:09 Now, it’s really more of that. Definitely before that, when I didn’t have as much work as I do now, I was more actually helping find, and doing more of the nitty-gritty work.

Sherri Langburt: 02:24 So, that’s interesting that you say that, when you talk about the nitty-gritty work. I know that a lot of people have a hard time, and there’s a lot of platforms out there, like influencer identification platforms.

Do you use any influencers identification platforms? What’s your take on them?

Jennifer S.: 02:39 Yeah. We initially started actually working with agencies in different platforms. We’d tested a lot of stuff, there’s a lot of different companies out there.

Jennifer S.: 02:50 I think we thought, oh, this makes a lot of sense. It’s less time consuming.

Jennifer S.: 02:55 But, we found for us, it ended up being more time consuming, and financially wasn’t beneficial for the brand. I think that was just our learning. I think other brands have different KPIs then we do.

Jennifer S.: 03:12 I think they view it differently than we do. We prefer a very engaged influencer, versus looking at just general numbers and impressions.

Sherri Langburt: 03:23 Yeah. I mean, I think that it really does depend where you’re at, and what kind of … If you’re at an agency, or at a brand. Certainly, there are tools that are great.

If you are more picky with the influencers, what are some of the things you’re looking at, in terms of the criteria?

Jennifer S.: 03:39 Yeah, we look at engagement rate, I would say, by far is our biggest barometer. So, looking at engagement rate per post, and then also for their channel overall.

Jennifer S.: 03:50 Then, working with them … We want it to feel natural. Our biggest thing is feeling like this is an authentic, organic post and not something that feels forced. I think I personally see a ton of people working with brands that just don’t seem like they align with everything else they’re doing. I think that’s our biggest, number one rule.

So you can feel like they would be a consumer of Popchips.

Sherri Langburt: 04:20 Right. Then, when you talk … It’s easy to talk about, I guess, engagement on different channels that are social.

Is there any way that you look at engagement on a blog article?

Jennifer S.: 04:32 Yeah, I think for that one we try to look at how people are engaging with the article, and also just overall impressions. We’ve actually seen, which is pretty rare for a few of our tactics, people talking about where they found out about Popchips from, whether it be a podcast, an influencer, or a blog post. They’ll actually mention who they saw that from. We’ve actually been fortunate that we’ve been able to track even down to that level, which is great.

Is there any specific type of influencer or surprising content category that you look for, that performs best for the brand?

Jennifer S.: 05:27 So, this is a shock to me. We found that we actually are very big in the body builder world.

You don’t really associate eating chips and body building, but for whatever reason, we found a lot of fitness accounts were just naturally loving the brand, and giving us love on social media without even sending them product, or even working with them. Apparently, we fit within their macros.

Jennifer S.: 06:02 We’re the perfect snack for them.

Sherri Langburt: 06:06 That’s so interesting.

Jennifer S.: 06:09 We actually have, like, quite a few people who we’ll just send them product, and we’ve worked with a few of them. Obviously, body builders aren’t really who we built the brand for. It was more for the everyday snacker, who just wanted to feel less guilty about what they’re eating. That one, for me, was probably the biggest surprise.

Sherri Langburt: 06:32 I mean, it definitely is. I guess, is the snack, is it paleo, or no? It’s not paleo?

Jennifer S.: 06:39 Well, it’s not paleo. It’s truly … It’s not for the keto, paleo people. This is truly for the body building community, who eat carbs.

Sherri Langburt: 06:51 That’s amazing. Okay.

Jennifer S.: 06:52 There’s a whole other macro diet where you’re looking at carbs, fat, protein. I’ll be honest, I’m not super familiar with it.

Sherri Langburt: 07:02 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jennifer S.: 07:03 You know, we fit within there, it’s a perfect snack for them, for the carb ratio to fat, to protein.

Sherri Langburt: 07:11 Okay, got it.

Jennifer S.: 07:13 It’s a potato, at the end of the day, and they can eat potato. They find that it’s a great treat for them.

Sherri Langburt: 07:20 No, it’s definitely not high calorie. Yeah, that’s very interesting.

Sherri Langburt: 07:25 Any others that jump out at you?

Jennifer S.: 07:30 No. I think that was probably, by far, the biggest one.

Sherri Langburt: 07:33 Okay.

Jennifer S.: 07:34 I do think, for us, we always felt like we skewed more mom.

We did a consumer segmentation recently, in the last two years, and we found out that it’s not just moms. It actually skews pretty evenly between everybody, which was, I think, another surprise for us.

You know, moms are still paying attention, but it’s not … I think everyone in CPG thinks, oh, who’s shopping? Mom’s shopping. For us, we found out that it wasn’t just mom, which is always good to learn.

Sherri Langburt: 08:10 Yeah. My CPG experience, I remember being in so many meetings, probably when we talked about when bloggers first started. Everyone is say, “Mom is COO of the family, Mom is COO of the family.” It’s like, you look now, especially when you’re talking influencers, there’s so many just Millennial lifestyle influencers that are talking about all the foods that they’re eating. I find that so interesting, and the information that you found from your study is interesting as well.

What’s your take on the Millennial audience, in terms of how you work with them?

Jennifer S.: 08:42 So, we grew up with the Millennial audience, to be honest. The brand entered into their lives, you know, almost 13 years ago. We’ve grown up with them.

Especially from … Around the time people are leaving home, around 18, is really when they’re starting to make decisions on their own. A lot of the Millennials, when they were starting to make their own food decisions, we were part of that decision making, and we’ve grown up with them.

I think, in general, for us they’re our biggest consumers. It’s because of the timing of when the brand launched, and them making their own shopping decisions. We, I think, have always been this very lifestyle, pop culture brand, who have aligned and grown with them.

To us, we try and speak to them as much as possible, but we have found that we’re a little bit broader than just Millennial, and just moms. It truly is … We’re catching the more 50/50 ratio of women to men. We’re catching people even a little bit younger than Millennial now. Also, still growing up with them as they get into their older age. We thought it was always married people, and it’s not. It’s a lot of people who are still single, but over 30.

It’s just been, we’ve learned that it’s a broader spectrum that and Millennial. I think influencers, we’ve always gone back to that to find them, and talk to them, and approach them.

Sherri Langburt: 10:25 Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if you even know, but Popchips was probably my first client when I launched my agency. They were very, very big on sampling. We would do these influencer events, and every time we did an influencer event, Popchips was like, “We’re there, we’re going to do it with you.”

Is event marketing big, whether it’s with influencers or sampling at events? Is that still a big thing for Popchips?

Jennifer S.: 10:49 So, we, in the last … When I came one, five and a half years ago, we still continue to do it, but it was a lot more structured and more minimal than how we previously did it.

When you launch a brand, of course field marketing and sampling is the number one thing that you do.

We were at a point, the brand was at a point, where we had done it for so long that it was time to start doing more of the traditional marketing, and also start experimenting with some of those digital and social tools that were out there. That was what I was brought in to help do, and the team at the team, was to really build out that next step, and to bring the brand into that next level.

We still, to this day, sample occasionally as we do, we just don’t have a field team any longer. Before my time, even, there was something like 36 Field Marketing Managers across the US, which is great for when you’re launching. We really found that, at some point, you have to stop giving your product away for free.

Sherri Langburt: 11:56 Yeah.

Jennifer S.: 11:56 Eventually building out your marketing plans a little further. It’s definitely still part of our overall marketing, it’s just not as large of a focus as it was before.

Sherri Langburt: 12:08 Yeah, that makes sense. I don’t know the ins and outs, but I didn’t realize a lot of it had to do with the field marketing associated to it. It’s very interesting to learn.

There’s a new snack item in your lineup of snacks, and it’s a pea Popchips. Could you tell us a little bit more about it?

Jennifer S.: 12:31 Yeah. For probably four years, I’ve been telling our R&D team, we need to simplify our ingredient label.

We need something to have three or four things in it, period. Then, the team challenged them, we really need to find something that we can take in a pole form, and put in our machines. We found out that cracked peas worked perfectly. That is how we evolved into creating a popped pea chip.

Sherri Langburt: 13:07 Wow, okay.

Jennifer S.: 13:08 Again, it’s literally just pea, salt, and oil. It’s all completely natural, there’s nothing added to it. It actually has fiber and protein in it.

Honestly, to me, it’s one of the best things we’ve ever made because of how simple the ingredient label is. Also, it truly is a filling snack, because of the fiber and protein. To me, it was my baby.

When we finally thought past the R&D part, I took it from building a brand plan out for it, and working with the sales team, and finding that sales story for them.

It also, for us as a brand, was getting incremental sales for an entirely different section of the grocery store. We will it into produce, because it’s a vegetable, it’s a vegetable. That’s where you go if you’re not … a lot of the snack aisle would want it, but we really pushed for it to be in produce, which has been great for the brand. We’re expanding beyond the snack aisle.

Sherri Langburt: 14:16 That is great.I was going to say. My mind is racing to give you ideas for other things to create Popchips from. But, go ahead, sorry.

Jennifer S.: 14:28 No, it’s been exciting. We have gotten such great feedback, the retailers are loving it. They think it’s amazing, they love the taste. We have a farmhouse ranch flavor for people that need a little bit more flavor than just salt.

It’s just, I think, everyone’s really excited and happy about it. It’s great to see that the consumers are starting to love it. We’re actually in the middle of our influencer campaign, right now. We just kicked it off a few weeks ago. You’ll gradually start seeing posts from influencers about it.

What kind of influencers are you leaning toward for that product push? Is it a big campaign, just to get a lot of messaging out there?

Jennifer S.: 15:15 Yeah. We always filter the lens of who the Popchips consumer is, and then we will go a step further. We really see ourselves as more of a lifestyle brand, so people come to us because of our personality. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.

We’re not just a snack brand, we are in everyone’s lives in different ways. We now have gone down four different product line routes, for every occasion that you might want. So, we see ourselves a little bit differently, so we use that lifestyle filter as our second biggest filter.

Jennifer S.: 15:55 Then, we go down to, again, we’re not going to work with someone who will post about something that’s a junk food, and then post about us. That doesn’t feel organic. It really, truly, goes back down to that, is it organic? Does it feel natural? Are they falling within Popchips parameters?

Jennifer S.: 16:19 Yeah, I think the scope is pretty narrow for us, for the most part. We’re always constantly looking for new people. I think each product line brings itself different types of influencers. They still, when you see them, they still fall within our typical guidelines.

Sherri Langburt: 16:40 Yeah. I mean, you could see, there’s beautiful content, fun content. It’s very cheerful content, and it’s beautiful on your whole Instagram channel. It does speak well, and you can see the different types of people.

Sherri Langburt: 16:56 I’m sure you have influencers that are coming to you constantly. We often get asked from influencers, all different questions. How could I do better? What could I do better? How do I approach brands?

If you had to share any advice with influencers, whether it’s reaching out to you, what would the advice be?

Jennifer S.: 17:14 To truly find brands that align with what you’re about. I think one of my biggest pet peeves are people that will just work with anyone. That, to me, that just shows that they’re just in it for the money, they’re not really catering to their channel. They’re not really doing what is best for them.

Jennifer S.: 17:40 I think that shows. That’s why we really look at engagement rate, is because you can tell when something is not authentic on someone’s channel, because the engagement rate is below 1%. Sure, they might have a ton of followers, but if the engagement isn’t there, you know that those followers don’t care about what they’re posting about, or they know that it’s not real and they keep swiping.

Jennifer S.: 18:05 I think, truly staying true to your channel. Consumers are smarter than we all think. Tell them a story that’s authentic to you, and what you’re about. I think every influencer has their … True influencers, that are really good, know their niche. The cadence of that is constant, and that is why they’re so successful. When they’re all over the place, it’s when, I think, it can go down the wrong road.

Sherri Langburt: 18:36 Yeah. I also think if there’s sponsored post after sponsored post, that also becomes an issue.

Jennifer S.: 18:42 Totally. I have seen people where every single post on their grid is a sponsored post. I’m like, why would we work with you? You don’t do anything for yourself, there’s no other content there.

Sherri Langburt: 18:53 Right.

Jennifer S.: 18:53 I think that’s super important, as well. There needs to be some breathing room.

Everyone is talking about Instagram getting rid of the likes. Is that something that everyone is concerned about?

Jennifer S.: 19:14 I think it’s definitely a concern for all brands that pay attention to that. I think, in the perfect world, Instagram would still give brands and influencers analytics, but if it’s just not public that’s fine.

Jennifer S.: 19:34 I think if we could work with them on that, that would be great. I think if it totally goes away, I think it’s going to be really … The business is going to change drastically. I don’t know what the future would be. How are we ever supposed to measure what success looks like?

Sherri Langburt: 19:48 We might have to go back to blogs.

Jennifer S.: 19:53 You know, I don’t think blogs will ever totally go away.

Sherri Langburt: 19:56 I agree.

Jennifer S.: 19:57 I think that they’ve been around for over 10 years, they’ll be around for … The Internet is not going anywhere.

Sherri Langburt: 20:05 Well, I also think that long-form ad content, it’s there forever. So, there’s no one changing the rules on you, you own your own blog. If people are searching, they could find recipes. You can’t necessarily create as much of a detailed story in any of the other social platforms. I agree, I’m a big fan of blog content.

What do you think lies in the future for influencer marketing? Where do you see the industry going?

Jennifer S.: 20:36 So, I think technology will definitely change influencer marketing, and it’s constantly evolving, as we know. I think back to … Influencer marketing truly has been around for as long as I can remember, it just was in different forms.

Jennifer S.: 20:54 It was, you know, brands sponsoring events, and sending premiums to celebrities hoping that they use them, and there’s a paparazzi photo of them with it. Like, there’s giveaways, they’re being integrated into TVs and movies. I think influencer marketing is constantly evolving and changing.

Jennifer S.: 21:17 Right now, Instagram is the hot thing that everyone is doing. It’s a lot easier for brands to work with people on, you can connect with them and find out their information easier. I just think technology will probably drive that.

Jennifer S.: 21:34 Also, I think the word celebrity has changed a lot. Now, there’s YouTube stars, and there’s smaller format TV shows that are on networks. There’s just so many different things out there now.

Jennifer S.: 21:49 There’s so much content out there, that it’s just going to continue to evolve. I think some of the things that were done traditionally are eventually will go away, or just not be used as much.

Jennifer S.: 22:01 We’ve all just become content vacuums, and the generation below are even more so that way.

Jennifer S.: 22:09 I think the platform influencers use will just continually evolve as the generations change.

Jennifer S.: 22:15 For example, TicTok, you can’t really do any sponsored posts on there quite yet. It’s still this totally new, very different type of platform. Things go viral on there for brands, and they don’t even know about it sometimes, unless they’re checking it, and constantly looking at it. I remember there was a hair care line, their sales went through the roof because a video on TicTok blew them up, about how amazing their hair product was. All of a sudden, they couldn’t figure out why their sales were so high.

Sherri Langburt: 22:53 That’s amazing.

Jennifer S.: 22:54 They finally got it back that it was because it was on TicTok, some video went viral.

Jennifer S.: 23:01 I just think the avenue is going to change, I think influencer marketing will just evolve with it.

Sherri Langburt: 23:06 Well, that is very insightful. Thank you.

Sherri Langburt: 23:08 Thank you for being part of our interview today. Is there anything else you want to share, anything new?

Jennifer S.: 23:16 No. I think we’ve tried to evolve with the times, and I think hopefully we’ve found our niche. I think, as a brand, consumers are seeing that and are engaging with it more. I think for all brands, they shouldn’t shy away from it. I think you just have to find the right avenues for you. Whether it’s podcasts, influencers, Instagram, Facebook, bloggers, whatever it may be, and once you find that the success will just come from there.

Sherri Langburt: 23:48 Well, thank you so much, and wishing you all the best with the new snack launch.

Jennifer S.: 23:54 Thank you!

Sherri Langburt: 23:55 Speak to you soon. Bye!

Jennifer S.: 23:57 All right, bye.