When the “brands as publishers" movement took off, Code and Theory was in the perfect position to lead a new kind of branded content revolution. As the creative agency behind some of the biggest publisher redesign projects in recent history—including Vogue and Mashable—the company has a unique expertise in how users engage with, share, and consume content online. In 2010, the agency launched its Brand Design Group, and set out to tackle the same problems for brands. The team, which has almost doubled in size every year since its inception, builds dynamic brand touch-points everyday, using social storytelling as the foundation. This guiding principle has set the stage for many successful socially-driven executions, like the Justin Tucker Dr Pepper /1 partnership, which started with an online video and grew into a one-of-a-kind cultural phenomenon, or CITY, Maybelline New York’s fashion-forward blog, or transformed essie.com into a best-in-class digital destination for socially-shareable beauty content. We don't believe in one-hit social wonders. We believe in long-term engagement. — Our social media program for Dr Pepper is the perfect example. Through a mix of consistent influencer outreach, adaptive content creation and integrated digital campaigns, we generated more than just likes and shares—we turned fans into higher-frequency customers. A recent study showed that after someone becomes a fan on Facebook, they take 35 percent more trips to the store to buy Dr Pepper. This year, Forrester awarded us the top prize in the “Social Relationship" category of the Forrester Groundswell Awards. We believe a brand has more than just one story. — A brand, like a person, is not singular. It has many facets and many stories to tell. For every brand we represent—from BURGER KING and Snapple, to Maybelline New York—we work tirelessly to uncover these facets, and turn them into story streams that live across the entire digital ecosystem. Like our Snapple Re-enFACTments social campaign, which has proven to be one of the brand’s most powerful storytelling devices to engage both new and loyal customers in social. Every two weeks, we release content and physical products created by interesting collaborators like chef Andrew Zimmern, toymaker Frank Kozik, and musician j.viewz, who bring “Real Facts" from under the cap in their own unique ways. We have our ear to the ground, building real-time insights into the creative process. — For example, we worked with essie to develop a strategically “social-first" design for their new responsive website. Every piece of the new digital experience, from the individual product pages to the searchable color wall, was built with social sharing in mind. For example, we discovered that users respond better in social when nail color appears on real hands. So, we brought in hand models and shot hundreds of shareable looks for the new site, which users could easily post to Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook or Twitter. As essie was the first brand in category to do this, the payoff in social was huge. In fact, each piece of content was shared to Pinterest 67 times on average, leading to millions of organic impressions with no paid media. Another example: We knew we had hit a cultural chord when we released an online spot for Dr Pepper’s /1 campaign which featured pro-footballer Justin Tucker belting out Mozart on the stage of Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre. It spread like wildfire in social, and was picked up on the front page of BaltimoreRavens.com, aired in full on every 6’oclock local news broadcast in Baltimore, and a few weeks later, prompted a feature in The New York Times. But we didn’t stop there. We kept a close watch on Tucker’s success and found authentic opportunities to engage with fans. For example, when Tucker kicked a record SIX field goals in one game, our social team scoured every grocery store in New York to send him the perfect gift basket of six unique Dr Pepper bottles. Tucker thanked the brand with an unprompted thank-you Instagram that made national headlines. We don’t hesitate to get in the game first.— Within hours of Instagram Video’s debut last July, our first stop-motion video for Maybelline New York was created and posted just in time for happy hour. As engagement numbers grew, so did our stop-motion video prowess. From essie nail polish bottles walking a faux runway for New York Fashion Week, to tubes of Baby Lips Dr. Rescue transforming into snowflakes to ward off the PolarVortex—we’re always looking for ways to use new platforms to surprise and delight our brand’s followers in real time. Above all, we ensure that everything we do in social media is driving towards the larger brand objectives. — For Dr Pepper’s annual Tuition Giveaway contest, our goal was to help increase user participation. By reengineering the digital experience with social media behaviors at its core, we successfully increased site visits by 564 percent and audience votes by a staggering 9,901 percent, as compared to the program's performance in 2012. We believe social media is a full-ecosystem behavior, not a separate silo. It’s the connective thread for all connection points, both online and off. When we build full-scale content initiatives like CITY, socially re-engineer Dr Pepper’s Tuition Giveaway program, or create immersive, social storytelling platforms like “The Girl With The Big Eyes" — it’s always with the bigger picture in mind: Namely, how can we create a system of consumer pathways into the brand, and how does this build our clients' brands and businesses? Everything we do drives toward a larger goal, whether it’s increasing purchase, driving engagement or building brand equity. In the end, we're judged by our contribution to the bigger picture, and we love the challenge.
