Long before Jenn Riek was Associate Manager of Content Marketing at DoorDash, she worked for Imgur, producing native ad campaigns for the platform’s audience (read: 250 million millennial males who didn’t want to be marketed to*).

She learned something critical during this time that she’d take to every job after: Sometimes, the side door is the best way to make an entrance. 

*Imgur users skew majority-male, with recent stats coming in at 69.93% males, mostly between the ages of 18-34. 

Is It a Tide Ad or Side-Door Marketing — Or Both?

“The side door approach is not scientifically backed in any way,” she calls out, “but it’s the way I bucket my information when I’m brainstorming and executing. You’ve got your front door, which is your obvious marketing — the things you see every year, like advertising backpacks for back-to-school. Back door is the exact opposite; you’ve got a campaign that you don’t understand how it attaches to the brand whatsoever.”

Between those two options lies a middle choice: the side door, which is a creative way of getting you to the same destination in the end. 
Think David Harbour in the infamous 2018 Super Bowl “Tide ad” campaign, which features cliche-looking ad scenes while Harbour repeats over and over, “It’s a Tide ad.”

Eventually, you realize that every single person in the commercial has impressively clean clothes on and you think to yourself, “Oh. Right. That was a Tide ad.” And, if you were among the 163,000 people who flocked to social media to talk about the ad right after it aired, you told your friends about it, too. 

For Jenn, using this side-door strategy at Imgur allowed her to come up with interesting ways to deliver information to people who might be initially resistant. She later transitioned to B2B, working for Atlassian and Evernote before taking her current role at DoorDash for Business, where she aims to strike a balance between educational and entertaining content. 

Repositioning Mike’s Hard Lemonade as a Feel-Good Brand

Though she’s been in the B2B world for a while now, some of Jenn’s favorite campaigns are still on the B2C side of her portfolio. Let’s go back to her time at Imgur and see how she put her side door tactics into action for a brand many of us know too well: Mike’s Hard Lemonade. 

Now, if just hearing that name gives you an instant hangover, you aren’t alone. That’s why Mike’s reached out for help to begin with; they wanted to get away from people’s preconceived notion of Mike’s as a clandestine teenage drink choice and nothing more. (Writer’s note: The legal drinking age is 21, and we in no way endorse anything other than that!)   

Prior to Jenn designing the “The Journey Home” campaign, Imgur had done several straightforward product-based campaigns for Mike’s, but the reputation wasn’t budging. So Jenn took a different approach. 

“What we did was the equivalent of sitting on a park bench in a busy area and just listening to the community to find out what mattered to them,” she recalls.  

At the time, an Imgurian (an Imgur user) with a ton of frequent flyer miles would give some away every Christmas to folks who wanted to go home for the holiday. He did this for five consecutive years, and people (of course) loved it. Jenn took notes and decided to put some Mike’s Hard Lemonade money behind this idea in an attempt to refresh the brand image. 

Essentially, Mike’s sponsored a contest, promising to pay for some Imgurian trips home for Mother’s and Father’s Day. Entrants submitted personal stories, and winners received flights to surprise their families with a visit. Jenn picked out six people per holiday to win — five got money to put toward a flight home and the sixth would be followed by a film crew for the final two posts. (Spoiler alert: There were tears involved.) 

The entire campaign consisted of five posts: 

The end result? One of the best-engaged CTRs for Mike’s, coming in at 1.5x better than the usual engagement rate. Plus, a ton of feel-good moments of genuine human connection.  

“It’s so rare on the internet to have an end-to-end wholesome thing,” Jenn says. “That’s what this was. It was social impact in the most organic way, and it was one of our most successful campaigns in the two years I was at Imgur. Plus, it sparked several other social impact campaigns from brands like Tito’s Handmade Vodka, who wanted to empower Imgurians to do things they love.” 

How to Craft Content That Stands Out 

If you’d like to pull off an impactful campaign like the one we just saw, here are Jenn’s top pointers, gleaned over the course of her career.

1. Create content with clear benefits. Ask yourself: Are you creating content for the sake of creating it, or are you actually enriching someone’s life? Jenn heard a quote about ChatGPT that she’ll carry with her forever: “If you didn’t care enough to write something, why should I care enough to read it?” 

“Know the concrete benefits of the content you’re making,” she urges. “Take the guesswork out of it for your audience. How can this apply to their lives? What benefits will they see from making these changes? What’s the one thing you want them to take away?”

2. Pull inspiration from your own interests. Some of Jenn’s best content lately comes from chatting with her friends. She watches a lot of movies, and while she was at Evernote, she put together a post called “Movies That Could Have Been Avoided.” 

In the post, Jenn chose three classic movies like “Jurassic Park,” gave a brief description of what happened in the movie, and then reimagined the plot using Evernote products. (For example, a recurring task to check the T-Rex’s enclosure could have changed everything.) 

3. Use brand colors or emojis to differentiate content types, like we do on the Managing Editor homepage. This helps readers understand different recurring “columns” and tune in to what they’re interested in. 

4. Pay attention to the content you like. Ask yourself what it is about that content that draws you in. Is it the branding? The wording? The site? Something else? “Breaking it down and reflecting on what resonates with you will help you resonate with others,” Jenn states. 

5. Use surveys and polls to find out what people want. Usually, folks are eager to share their feedback! 

One caveat: Sometimes, feedback can feel like a double-edged sword. 

“People are gonna complain a lot,” Jenn concedes. “They’re gonna tell you your product sucks. That’s actually a gift because they could have just abandoned your product and not said anything! The fact that they’re choosing to complain gives you an opportunity to correct that, whether it’s giving a refund or providing an explanation — empowering them with information and having a conversation that may make them a stronger customer in the end.”