How 'Pigs in a Blanket' Dog Toy Ad Went Viral for BARK’s Head of Content

Starting out as the third BARK employee, Stacie Grissom uses internet culture to fuel and rethink their content strategy at the monthly dog-product subscription company. Now Head of Content at Bark, Stacie shares how an accidentally unfortunate-shaped Thanksgiving dog toy, fortunately, resulted in 110,000 unique website visits and how it has influenced an all-team inhouse collaborative effort for their products. Discover how a reply tweet brought her a career at BARK, the world of “dog toys accidentally shaped like sex toys,” and why their “Dog Mom Anthem” video revives every Mother’s Day. How did you get to where you are today? Any noteworthy aha-moments along the way? I am that cliche of the Midwestern kid who wanted to move to the big city. Working my first in Indiana, a friend sent me this tweet that set the next decade of my life in motion: I replied and I’ve been at BARK for almost nine years since. I’ve watched this company grow from 2,000 customers to over a million. On my first day in 2012 we had three employees and a couple thousand social media followers. Today, we have over 500 employees and over 9 million social media followers. It’s been a wild ride for which I am absurdly grateful, and it might never have happened if a friend hadn’t sent me that Tweet. What's the most innovative thing you're currently working on? It is a result of an accidental moment in November 2019 around one of our Thanksgiving-themed toys. Our “Big Honkin’ Pigs in a Blanket” toy that we thought was an innocent plush version of a bread-wrapped snack, actually reminded MANY folks of a very spicy sex toy. We noticed there was some really funny activity on this ad so our social team jumped into the comments and started having fun. We stayed late at the office and left roasts, marriage proposals, horrible life advice, and dog praise in the comments. The next morning, the ad had exploded and a bunch of people were screenshotting and sharing our ridiculous comments. We sold out of the toys in a few hours, we had over 18,000 comments and 6,900 shares on the ad, BARK’s reaction was covered in over 26 pieces of press, and our recap article got over 110,000 unique visits in less than 48 hours. This aha-moment made us rethink BARK’s content strategy, which is a huge chunk of the brand/awareness marketing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgLkPMWUMGI The most innovative thing I’m working on is a direct result of this pig butt moment, which I am calling “Drops.” A “Drop” refers to the social, toy design, and marketing teams collaborating to develop products with socially powerful stories that turn regular dog products into explosive moments of PR, social, and customer community. In 2020, our 4/20 collection of dog toys resulted in the best two sale days in company history, beating our previous Black Friday by almost 3x. What new or up-and-coming innovation(s) are you most excited about and how do you think it will change the future of marketing? It’s doing stuff in real life (IRL) together again. Someday soon I just want to throw a gigantic DACHTOBERFEST party with 107 spicy Dachshunds. I think last year showed us how precious those IRL human experiential moments are and WOW do I miss all the dogs! If you could only do organic social on one platform for your brand, which would it be and why? Ahh, isn’t that the dream, to have one single platform to manage as opposed to a sprawl of forty-three different channels with a small handful of teammates? Most of our successes were results of hitting the Internet lottery with enormously viral moments, and then parlaying into some portion of an audience. The platform with the most potential right now is TikTok. We’ve had genuine and delightful moments, most of the most explosive moments have come from customers interacting with our products! TikTok is the only place where it’s possible for someone to hit that Internet lottery in a big fun way! What’s one piece of work from your career that you’re the proudest of? Because I will always be the scrappy #3 startup employee at heart, I’m proudest of the moments that gave BARK outsized bang-for-buck returns. Written and shot completely by our in-house content team, ‘Dog Mom Anthem’ gave us a chance to cash in on every dog parenting one-liner we had in our brains. The result was one of our most viral pieces of content, who still wakes from her slumber without fail every Mother’s Day. This video collected 70 million views, over 295,000 comments and was named the Most Engaging Piece of Brand Content in May of 2017 and 2018. I think in total we spent about $3k to make it. Was there ever a time where you questioned your career path? How did you handle that? If it feels like the larger business world evolves at an exhausting clip, the content/marketing world moves even faster. I’ve had moments where we had to pivot our whole team, lay off a whole team, and that stuff is hard. But I’ve never questioned the larger path—which is more like a vast wild west expanse of whatever you want it to be if you can back it up with some metrics. What is one skill that you think is currently underdeveloped in Marketing? It’s developing a better sense for what stories are interesting to people. In the world of content, you must provide value to your audience if you want them to pay attention. The value exchanges are simple: you make someone laugh, teach them something new, or compliment their dog. But you can’t scream from an Instagram hilltop, “BUY MY STUFF!” No one wants to hear that. How do you pick and develop the talent on your team? I’m drawn to hiring people with a sense of humor. Hire comedians is one part selfish (funny people make great coworkers) and one part strategic. If you understand how to make people laugh, you understand a lot of things about communicating complex messages to people in concise ways, making you great at marketing. I also prioritize people who have their own personal social media hobbies. Marketing jobs today aren’t clock-in-clock-out gigs, especially on the creative side. These are roles where you get your best ideas in the shower. Folks who dabble in this world both in their free and paid time find inherent enjoyment in it and love the game of chasing that next big explosive moment. What’s the first post to come to mind when you hear “best-in-class social”? I am impressed by the team at Nuggs dabbling in the delights and absurdity of meme culture but still feeling designed, coherent, and styled... and somehow relevant to vegan chicken nuggets! What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? “I’d prefer if you were 10% less efficient in your job if you were doing something that adds something weird to BARK.” -Carly Strife, co-founder of BARK “Quit trying to put ten pounds of sh*t in a two-pound bag.” - My dad “HI GOOD MORNING DID YOU KNOW TODAY IS THE BEST DAY EVER AND SO WAS YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW WILL BE TOO???” -My dog, Pimm, if she could talk.

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How 'Pigs in a Blanket' Dog Toy Ad Went Viral for BARK’s Head of Content

Stacie Grissom talks about how fan interactions led to huge sales and their brand's Onlyfans

Julian Gamboa

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Julian Gamboa