November 18, 2024 • 48 mins
The social media team for RFK Racing does things a little differently than most others with its mix of serious and straightforward and fun and honest content. We’re meeting the team behind the accounts and how they got to RFK Racing. Then we jump into one member transitioning into motorsports from college athletics; how the posting process works with multiple people having account access; any approval process for posting; it being a conscious shift in how in-race updates are presented; keeping the emotions in check during the race; the change in engagement over the years; having other race teams engage with the content; the return on investment with social media; who spends them mot time online; content or a post they are each most proud of contributing.
Original music created by Tony Monge.
Follow me here: https://linktr.ee/kellycrandall
Original music created by Tony Monge.
Follow me here: https://linktr.ee/kellycrandall
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Racing Writers Podcast. I'm your host,
Kelly Krandell. We have three guests joining us today from
RFK Racing, Brandon Lee, Thomas Burfield, and Elijah Burke. They
are part of the team that runs the social media
content for RFK Racing, the main accounts as well as
the two driver accounts, and I just get a kick
out of it, and I wanted to highlight them and
(00:29):
how they go about doing their job because I feel
like it's a little bit different than maybe what most
teams are doing on social media. You have your weekly updates,
which is great content during the week paint schemes, news,
whatever that is to promote the team, the sponsors, and
then during race weekend, I feel like is where they
really stand out, using memes, gifts, emojis, the latest social
(00:51):
media trends, and just being honest with their updates about
how their team and their drivers are doing. So this
is a really fun con and I'm really glad I
got to highlight these three and do something a little
bit different and I think we had a great time.
So I hope you enjoy it. I hope you learn
something new and go behind the scenes of what it's
like at a race team to deliver social media content
(01:13):
for you, the race fans. Let's jump into it. Here
is Brandon, Thomas, and Elijah on the Racing Writers Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Let's just jump into the conversation. Bring you guys in.
So we have Thomas, Elijah and Brandon here, and I want.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
To start by just each.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Of you going around and kind of just giving a
little bit of background on how you got to RFK racing.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
That way, the listeners can kind of start.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
To hopefully distinguish your voices as we jump into the conversation.
So Brandon, let's start with you, because I think you're
probably the most tenured guy there.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
So yeah, fair enough, I can do that. So, I, uh,
this is my seventh race season.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Here at RFK.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I've only ever worked for this race team in my
time in the sport. I got in and I guess
a less traditional way. I pretty much saw a job
on LinkedIn back in twenty eighteen and I applied for it.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
But little did I know at the time. The story goes.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
That my now boss who oversees all of us and
runs us operation, Kevin Woods, his best friend from high school,
Russell Branham, who formerly ran p R at Talladega. Those
two obviously were familiar with each other. I applied for
the job. I called Russell because I knew him at
the time, didn't obviously know Kevin, and I was like, hey, man,
I know we have like a loose relationship, but can
you tell me what this is about. And he's like, oh,
(02:28):
I know exactly what it is, and he told me,
gave me the spiel, and within like two days I
was interviewing. So I guess you can say mine was
because I knew somebody in a way, although one I
applied for it, I had no idea who I really knew,
if that makes sense. So yeah, that was pretty much
my simple way of getting in.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Elijah, let's jump to you.
Speaker 6 (02:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (02:47):
So I grew up in City, New York and Rochester,
and I was a big NASCAR fan growing up, and
I always wanted to work in it. I had gone
to college and had no idea what I what like
department of Racing and what section of NASCAR I wanted
to work in. So I just went for business degree
and when I graduated, I had a video of my
graduation speech in a NASCAR style. Go I'll call it
(03:10):
semi viral because people are like, oh, ye had a
video went viral, and I'm like trying to explain to people, like, yeah,
I've never seen that before, and I'm like, it went
viral enough for NASCAR on Fox and NBC and all
them to see it. And at that point, Ganassi had
hired me for sales and that didn't last long because
I sucked at it. So I started talking to the
girl on social media there a lot more and she
(03:31):
was like, you got great ideas, so like you can
work here as a hybrid. Ended up being that full
time for a couple of years, and then eventually when
they got bought out by track House, this opportunity here
to be social media manager at RFK had opened up.
I saw it on LinkedIn. Everyone was kind of on
LinkedIn almost every day at that job, trying to find
a new position. So I applied for it within I
(03:52):
think like forty eight hours. I'm pretty sure I got
the job. Interviewed actually with Thomas and Brand and it
was kind of funny being full circle here now. So yeah,
I've been here for a little over three years now
and love it. We get to do a lot of
fun stuff on the RFK channels.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
We're gonna talk about that fun stuff here in a minute,
all right, Thomas, right, not Tommy, Not tom I don't
want to insult you by shortening your name, so I'm
just gonna call you Thomas until you tell me otherwise.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (04:16):
I think the only person that's called me Tommy is
my sister at a very young age, and I love
her to death, but she still annoys the snot out
of me.
Speaker 6 (04:24):
So yeah, I prefer just Thomas.
Speaker 8 (04:27):
Yeah, but I'm kind of like Brandon in the sense
that I really like I had no experience in racing.
It was almost to the point where I would see
a NASCAR broadcast on and be like, ew, why is
someone watching that? And then you know, through college and
just kind of applied to a job on LinkedIn and
it was funny. The night before I interviewed for this role,
(04:48):
I watched four Versus Ferrari and I was like, okay,
wait a minute, like this is kind of cool, and
applied for the job, got interviewed, and ended up here
and been here now three years and have just fallen
head over heels in love with motorsports. So it's been
eye opening how much different it is and how the
(05:10):
uniqueness makes it so much more fun to watch than, say,
you know, a typical soccer baseball broadcast.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
For me, Thomas, let me stick with you on that,
because I wanted to ask about that because when I
was looking around, I came upon your LinkedIn page and
I saw that you came from basically what college athletics
into motorsports. So that's what I wanted to ask about.
Is that transition going from a stick and ball sports
and bringing your skill set and your mindset from that
(05:41):
to a race team.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
How has that been?
Speaker 8 (05:43):
So I'll be honest, My first race was Indianapolis Road Course,
the inaugural one in twenty twenty one, and it was
so strange for me because I was so kind of like,
you know, nervous, is my first time there. I didn't
know what to expect, and then the cars hit the
track and for some reason, I just felt right at
home and I was just like the same feeling of
(06:03):
you know, you have to capture the moment, you have
to be in the right place at the right time
and get your settings right on your camera and kind
of all of that same experience that you have in
a stick and ball sport, whether it be in a
basketball court or a football field, whatever it may be,
that same principles apply in motorsports to a degree, and
so it was it was really cool that, Like I
(06:24):
was sitting there and I was like, I don't know
what to experience, and then cars at the track for
the first time for practice.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
I'm like, Okay, this is going to be cool. This
is awesome.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
All right, So as we jump into the social media stuff,
you know, I may not direct a question specifically to someone,
so everybody just jump in. If you all got something
to say. I want this to be again, you all
do this, so I want everybody to have their time
to speak. So all right, we know that we have
the main RFK Racing account and then of course the
accounts for each of the drivers. So as we dig
in here, I guess the first thing is what's the
(06:55):
process here when there's multiple people trying to work on
these accounts and maybe you all have ideas or something
comes to mind, So whoever wants to kick it off,
just where do you even begin when you guys have
multiple accounts and multiple people with ideas.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
Thank god, I'll take that one to start. That's a
great question. It's never the same thing two times in
a row. Usually our baseline is we have like a
Tuesday meeting at nine am where we kind of take
an hour hour and a half to go over like, hey,
here's our schedule for the week. You know, here's our
paint preview. Today, we have built Submarines video. Tomorrow we
have our throwback Thursday tech talk idea something like that.
(07:32):
That kind of gives us structure for the week so
we can say, you know, we're making sure we got
the partner content, our main content for the race week
in general. But then when those ideas come up where
it's like man, I saw this TikTok trend or I
saw this Instagram trend. We have a really good chemistry
in the sensor. We just have a group chat. We
have several, to be honest. There's an Instagram one, there's
(07:52):
a I Messages one. There's one with our boss Kevin,
there's one without our bossy. Like there's this individual back
and forth. We will just send things all day long
and be like, hey, like we saw so and so
in college athletics did this, we should do that, or
oh I saw so and so at you know, Gibbs
did this, Like man, I wish we thought of this first.
Can we reinvent this in a different way? So figuring
(08:14):
out that and then once we we all kind of
look at it, like Thomas looks at it from a
different perspective than I will, and then Brandon will. So
if Thomas has an idea, sometimes it'll be like, hey,
like can we do this? And then I'm like, okay,
how can we position it for social Or I'll say, okay,
I have this idea, Thomas, can you make this happen
behind the camera or what do you think because in
(08:36):
this scenario, right, you're posting to thousands, hundreds of thousands
of people sometimes right, if not millions, and you're like,
you want to make sure you have other perspectives usually
before you ship it out there, because if like the
three of us find it funny, usually a bunch of
people will find it funny usually, and then if like
one of us finds it funny, then one's like, yeah,
(08:57):
I don't know about that. Then we're like, all right,
let's se if we can refine it. So it's usually
just like a process of just trusting what each other
thinks for the most part, and just not being afraid
to just shoot something over. We never feel like the
other person's gonna say, ah, you're dumb if that that
idea is terrible. It's more like we just laugh it
off or whatever, we figure out a way to do it.
So it's very all over the.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Place, Brandon, you were laughing there when he starts talking
about all the different chats that have gone on. So
it sounds like during the week it can get pretty crazy.
But what about before I circle back more on that,
what about race weekend and then when it comes to
updates and how that works for each of the accounts.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Yeah, one note on that.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
I was going to say, like, we pretty much always
have a notification that's not open on any given It's
like teams, I message this, I message like that's just
the way it is, which is a good thing.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Obviously it means we're communicating.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
But yeah, I mean once we get to race weekends,
like our team that's touching social you're pretty much looking
at it.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
With the addition of Kevin Wood sprinkled in there.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
I mean, we're you know, we don't have an operation
where we have four shooters and then three social media
people and then pr people Like this is our group.
So The interesting thing with that is is once we're
at the track, you know, it's pretty much a combination
of one of the three or four of us, but
really only two at a time.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
I mean there's.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Cases where certainly the three of us go to the
track together, but once we get well into the season,
you know, it's either myself and Thomas, myself and Elijah
woods in Elijah, you know.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
Whatever the combo is.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
And at that point, all we're doing is working off
of that list that Eli talked about from Tuesday, and
then we're just executing. And once we get to the
racetrack and you know, you kind of have your styles
and the ways you like to voice things and tone
and stuff like that. But yeah, it's I guess it's
just an efficiency thing and making sure we know, you know,
how we're supposed to do it every week, and once
you do it a few times, it's just a matter
(10:43):
of all, right, well who's on the on the keys
and making sure we're doing it right.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So is there an approval process? I'm assuming that because
you all have there's multiple people with access and with
these accounts that I assume and correct me if I'm wrong, Like,
what's the process when an idea comes up, is it
just I'm not going to fire it off on my own.
Is it something where those chats come into play to
where you all can shoot around the idea before whatever
(11:07):
it is it's going to go out to everybody.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Yeah, for sure, there is. I mean it, it depends
on what it is. Right Like, I will say, here's
the one thing that we're really good at. We trust
each other a lot, and because of that, there's just
a certain level threshold of things that we don't really
have to you know, send each other. We just know
is this gonna fly or not. But once you get
past that threshold of like, hey, this might be a
little out there, like is this too much, that's when
(11:31):
the you know, the chats come in. And certainly that
comes up all the time when all of these guys
weigh in on maybe examples or their thoughts. But it
definitely happens, don't get me wrong. But there's also just
a minimum that you just trust each other to do.
Then at that point you're just talking about you know,
bigger ideas and scenarios.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Thomas, it seemed like you're gonna go ahead.
Speaker 6 (11:51):
We definitely.
Speaker 8 (11:52):
Our chemistry is is almost scary you just you asked
about approvals. I mean, like we don't really have an
approval structure. Like it's kind of like I said, we'll
send these ideas and kind of bounce them off each other,
and we'll mold it into kind of what we want
it to be, and then we just kind of go
execute on it and we'll pass it around kind of
the three of us, and if we feel like it needs.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
Approval, we'll go to Woods.
Speaker 8 (12:13):
But for the most part, it's like we have enough
experience that and we've got our hands slapped enough that
you know, we know where the line is. But you know,
it's every once in a while you'll send something and
you'll be like, I don't know if this is gonna fly.
I'll send it in the group chat and you're like,
I don't know if this is gonna fly. And if
you get at least one no back from from one
of these two, you're like, okay, all right, I'm too far.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
My hand's recovered from the earlier days. Overall, you find
the line, and now we're at a point where like
we've kind of like found the line. Once in a
while you may step over it and you kind of
have to be in social you gotta be a little
edgy to be good. But the approval process, like Brandon
touched on a minute ago, like we do run pretty
lean overall, and when you have that and you're working
(12:55):
in social where you have to capitalize on the moment
most of the times, Like if a big incident happens
on track and we want to have like a reaction meme,
sometimes you just got to trust your gut and you're like,
all right, if this isn't going to get me fired,
and this isn't going to take a bunch of people off,
like if I've checked those two boxes off, Like you
got to have your own judgment, and that's what I
(13:17):
think makes all of us good in our positions. We
usually can have pretty good judgment about stuff on things.
And obviously again like you find the lines sometimes going
maybe something you're not even thinking about that comes up
later like oh sorry, Like it was hard to process
all that in the moment, But you don't necessarily have
all the time, nor can you when you're like all right,
(13:38):
I don't really want to have an additional three or
four hours of waiting sometimes for someone to get back
to you on something. It's like, hey, we empower you
to say this is something that's worth putting out, and
you know, I think it's shown that we've done some
really good stuff overall and benefited. We benefited from it
pretty highly.
Speaker 8 (13:57):
I'd also say that the sandbox we play in is
very large, so it's like, you know, I talk about
getting your handslapped, but it's like, you know, both I
gotta give credit to both Steve Newmark and Kevin Wood's
our boss for just kind of letting us do our thing.
You know, we we have a very long leash, and
so it's a huge credit to them for seeing the
value of doing that.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
So it's really cool and another way to show how
that trickles down Kelly in terms of memes, Like I
would say more than half the time, we'll be during
the race, and you know, I might not always see
what we posted on rfka account, and I'll see a
meme and I'll go, oh my gosh, we really posted that,
and I'll think to myself, I should probably say something,
but I'm like, no, We've done way worse, and then
I just move on because I know, like that's the
(14:39):
tone we've set, right, So if nobody was upset about
it twelve months ago. We are they going to be
upset about it now? And you know, you go back
later and you're like, oh, they got a lot of impressions.
That was pretty good. But yeah, rarely are we crossing
the line. You know, we know when we do it right,
like we know when we're pushing the needle.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
But yeah, it's a really big sandbox at Thomas's point.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, So to that point, Brandon, let me start this
question with you. I want to talk specifically here for
a minute about the Inn Race updates because I feel like, listen,
as you guys said, there's tons of stuff that you
guys can do during the week, right and you can
lay things out and have fun with that. But I
love I feel like the Inn Race updates because you guys,
in my opinion, stand out more from a lot of
(15:17):
the teams because of the way in which the Twitter
accounts are giving the updates.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
So Brandon, let me.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Start with you on that in the sense of was
it a conscious shift at all, because it seemed like
it's morphed over the years from straightforward updates to we're
just gonna have fun with this and if we're having
a bad day, we're having a bad day. If something happens,
we're gonna treat this almost like an AOL chat room, right,
Like we're gonna throw gifts in there, We're gonna throw
emojis in there.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Things are bad. Hey, we admins, we're feeling it too.
We're angry too. Was just shift or did that just happen?
Speaker 5 (15:49):
Yeah, no, it was.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
That's just the nature of like we realized that, hey,
most people aren't really going to Twitter.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
There's a very small audience.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
I feel like personally that's actually going to Twitter for
that true race up right, Like most people are paying attention,
they're in the moment, they're seeing it from other forms.
So I think part of it is like we realize
that we don't really need to just be so factual
that we're not being entertaining in a way.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
So that's where our tone kind of came from.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
And I'm gonna let mostly a log to Thomas speak
to that because that is definitely more their speed. They're
the ones usually doing that. But yeah, I mean it's true,
like we realized that why would we not be entertaining
and edgy and be more like that AOL chat room
when you know, why be the other because I don't
know it. Obviously, it's proven that, you know, people have
(16:33):
caught onto it and noticed it, so I'd say it's
play well.
Speaker 7 (16:35):
Yeah, to Brandon's point, I think that social media, at
least NASCAR social media, right, you have such a big
community feel to it at the end of the day,
like you feel like you log onto x X is
your main point of communication during the race, at least
for us, right, because it's just it's like a giant
text threat in a way, and we try to convey
(16:57):
the race like we're watching it with you, right. We
don't just comment on stuff that's happening to us. Now,
that's where the fine line comes in because you don't
you know, you're not trying to take off other teams
or your competitors or that's action about or anything. But
you kind of you can when a big crash happens
or something. We might not be involved, but we know
everyone's about to go on social media, especially Twitter and
(17:18):
either say something or see what was said, so we're
like we need to drop that reaction in there. On
top of that, I think people like in the media,
for instance, like apocriss or a glock or yourself like
those people, the media members have done such a good
job of being the source of overall updates for the
race unless you're talking about like something so team specific,
(17:41):
like you know, we lost two spots on pit road
or something right that the broadcast may not show that.
I'm like, that's kind of where people go for their
updates now, Like I have Pockers' notifications on, my wife
has Pockets notifications on, Like they're just like that's how
we get like our news in racing most of the time,
and that's how it happens during the race. So when
we're looking that as update channel, we're like on the
(18:02):
main account most of the time. It's like we don't
necessarily need those, and we've seen a lot of other
teams get away from them at the end of the day.
But the other tough balance is, right, it's NASCAR is
totally different than your sticking ball sports in the sense
that you have your thirty eight teams out there right
and not everything that happens to you is gonna get shown.
So it's like we got to find out a way
(18:23):
to like still tell our story and what's happening, but
also just be casual. The jumbo tron mentality, as Woods
would would say, which I really like. And that's really
I think played well for us because people are like,
we look forward to seeing what you guys are gonna
post during the race. We've heard many times, and I'm like,
that's cool because that's like, all right now, I don't
(18:43):
feel like at first for me at least, come over
here is like, man, we're really posting a lot of
stuff during the race. It's like not my traditional race updates.
We did it Ganassi, and then all of a sudden,
I'm like, oh wait, people want to see this. So
we just kept doing it more and more, and you're like,
it works.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Tom has anything to add to that.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I like this whole perspective of again, I feel like
you have to adapt with the times, but also just
have fun with it. Because Elijah you said there, it's
like we're watching the race with you.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I really like that.
Speaker 8 (19:10):
Yeah, I mean Eli covered it there. I mean that's
that's exactly we're the scoreboard mentality. We're trying to be
as entertaining as possible because I mean, Eli nailed it.
I mean, Pokers and you guys, the members of the
media have just done such a good job of telling
the story of everyone's story.
Speaker 6 (19:27):
Of the race. So it's like we have to be
we have.
Speaker 8 (19:29):
To find a way to stick out, We have to
find a way to garner attention that is going to
entertain them and entertain the audience just as much.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
As it is going to inform them.
Speaker 8 (19:39):
So it's just trying to repackage, you know, information in
an entertaining way.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So yeah, so Elijah puts it as we're watching the
race with you, You guys did a great job of
kind of explaining your mentality there. It's to me, I
look at it as the RFK accounts are. They're honest.
It's lighthearted at times, it could be serious at times,
and then there's times where I said a minute ago
that it's emotional too, right, like you guys live and
(20:07):
die of course by your teams. Whoever wants to kick
this one off, how many times have you had to
control maybe your personal emotions of just like how frustrating
it is when something happens.
Speaker 7 (20:20):
Right, Oh my gosh, who wants to go first on
that one?
Speaker 6 (20:24):
I'll take it first.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
I mean it's I don't know, you catch yourself, like
I'll say specifically, it's like there have been. So I
was on the sticks for Homestead this weekend and we
didn't exactly have a fantastic race, and so it was
trying to find ways to And I mean we were here,
all three of us were here in the RfR days,
(20:46):
and so we knew what it was like to not
run as well as we have been recently.
Speaker 6 (20:52):
So you know, we have some experience with that.
Speaker 8 (20:54):
But it's I don't know, you just you're trying to
find ways to find the positives, like I said, repackage.
Speaker 6 (21:02):
Them in ways.
Speaker 8 (21:03):
So I'll give you an example the Bees situation with
the spot erstand. I tweeted out something I was a
little bit upset. I thought this would get more traction,
but tweeted out the Barry B. Benson, which is from
the Bee movie. I tweeted out that he made an
appearance at the race. He was one of the honored guests.
And so it's just like things like that that, you know,
(21:24):
you try and not let the race affect you because
you still have to be that voice for voice of
entertainment for the audience.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
That's honestly taken back to the RfR days is where
this mentality came from. Where the sandbox came from because
Kevin Woods and Brandon I know you were here for
more of that. Will will tell you that like when
we weren't having our best days performance wise, like you
had to make up for it, and it's like it's
not fun for anyone when you're not running well on
track and you're like, Okay, how are we gonna get
(21:55):
our social impressions and engagements and like our conversation, how
can we can cheer because we're still out here to play.
So that's where like you know, gifts and memes and
just conversation that may had nothing to do with the
race at times would come up. And we've kind of
adopted that and taken it into a kind of kind
of like a new era, but still keeping that same mentality.
(22:17):
Emotion wise, it is tough. The hardest thing is when
a call doesn't go your way or you get wrecked
and you're like all right, Like for instance, like at
the Roval, Brad got dumped twice by the seventy seven,
and you know that, like people saw it the first time,
(22:38):
people didn't see it the second time. They're like, why
did Brad just lose you know, twenty spots he was
going to have a you know, a top ten run,
and you're like, I got to communicate this and I
want to show a little bit of personality for the
account like it normally would, but I'm like, I don't
want to step over the line. And you're also mad
because you're like, we normally let our emotions show through
a little bit, but we're like, we don't want to
(22:59):
go too far, and this is ridiculous all so you
kind of I was just like the number seventy seven
has like spun bred for the second time today, like
it's factual, but it's it's a little bit salty at
the same time, and people like, oh, so that's what happened,
Like I can't believe it, blah blah blah. And you
know we're on the other and than that half the
time or sometimes too, so we get it. Like at
(23:19):
the end of the day, I think the emotion shining
through is one thing that makes us different, but I
think it helps you resonate with your fan because sports
are emotional and we want to tweet like we're you
in a way.
Speaker 8 (23:33):
I'll add to that, there's a lot of hovering over
the send button and retyping.
Speaker 7 (23:38):
There's a lot of screenshots to Brandon and Thomas, Hey,
what do you think about this? It's like hmm sure
or nah, So.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Yeah, it's pretty emotional. I mean, yeah, of course we
get spun on peer roade. I'm pissed right Like we
didn't win Kansas because for whatever reason, and then you know,
our creutee stopped making sure the finish line straight.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
You don't think we didn't take a picture of that.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Of course we did. Like of course we've posted that.
But you know, I mean, like anything else, there's a
line to walk, and we try to. But I mean
sometimes you maybe across a little bit. But of course
it's emotional. If it wasn't, then either we're not doing
it right or we're just not We're hiding it in
some ways, right, So I think to you last point,
you have to be emotional to a certain point to
(24:20):
build or relate, because if you're not relating, then you
know it's not going to be engaging content.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Brandon, let me stick with you for a second.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You guys were talking there about RfR days and kind
of how that's transitioned into what you guys are doing
right now. How has the engagement for you all with
these accounts changed from the RfR days to now in
terms of because of how you guys have Obviously performance helps, right,
but in terms of how you guys are approaching these updates.
(24:50):
Has the engagement shifted in that regard?
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, I mean it's it's really night and day different
in terms of every social metric. Kelly, I'll let a
lodg I must, you know, spit out some numbers that
they have on top of their head. But it's pretty
wild to see just how things have changed over the years.
And you know, part of that is because of our
approach and some of that obviously it is because of
our success on the racetrack. But it's amazing what can
(25:14):
happen when you when you do run better, what avenues
it opens up to, you know, being more creative because look,
i mean there's only we RaSE thirty eight times a year.
You're gonna have weeks where you ride around in fourteenth
and nothing happens, right, and there's only so much you
can do around that. So that's where the creativity comes in,
and you know, maybe posting some more updates like well
this is kind of snooze fest guys, like you know,
(25:36):
obviously there's a line not to cross there too, but
those things kind of come up. So I mean, yeah,
we've we've adapted, but it's in large part due to
the success we've been able to have. But maybe Thomas
Neelie can throw out some numbers to really show the
big difference there.
Speaker 7 (25:51):
I was literally going to print out receipts for this
stuff beforehand. I'm like, nah, like we'll just we'll wing.
I should have been prepared in gage wise. I mean,
I can tell you what we've done since we've started,
at least, like we track our stuff. We compare ourselves
against other teams in the sport. We compare ourselves against
the driver wise, other drivers, because we we handle a
(26:13):
lot of content stuff for Buscher, and it is like
I have the same mentality person I think we all
do as the guys in the shop bar, Like this
is a competition, Like we're gonna we're gonna beat them
in engagements this month, you know. And what we tracked
through sprout social overall, like I was looking at just
this year, we've increased our video views by seven hundred percent.
(26:35):
We have like I think two hundred and sixty million
on the year just views overall, which is great like impressions.
I mean we overdoubled them last year, which was overdoubled
from the year before, which was over doubled from the year.
Like every year, it just seems like impressions and engagements
go up by at least one hundred percent. It's like
if we're not getting to if we're not doubling them,
(26:57):
then it almost feels like we're you know, not we're
not reaching the heights we should be in a way.
But you know that's gonna stop at some point in
a way. But a lot of that has to do
with you know, they roush RFK decided to invest in,
you know, bringing on Thomas and I and making our
team here with Brandon Woods's mentality of allowing us to
(27:18):
do this stuff has really helped us overall. But everything
is is at least doubled. I think usually my one
thing is I'll always try to track Instagram engagements. Instagram's
like the biggest platform right now in my opinion, and
gives us a really good job of like video content,
video views, and this month, I believe we're tracking to
be ahead of them in engagements, which is like my
(27:40):
gold standard because they just churn out video content, and
I'm like, we can get a couple of things to hit,
we can beat them. We got a couple things to hit.
So like we're always watching those and seeing but like, yeah,
years versus years, it's at least one hundred percent growth
across the board every year, and I look forward to
looking back at those. It's like a racing it's like
race reference for social media nerds looking at the Sprout
(28:03):
social stats.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
That's awesome, Elijah, As you were mentioning other race teams there,
and again anybody who wants to jump in on this.
The cool thing is it seems like there's other race
teams and I think Colleague is the biggest one that
has begun to interact back with the race updates or
the even during the week of what you guys are doing.
Is that a little point of pride too that, as
you said, you guys are competitors, but it has to
(28:27):
be fun to kind of have that engagement now with
other race teams recognizing what you guys are doing.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
Yeah, no, one hundred percent. I know they're admin over
their main Admund Garrett, he's a great guy and we
both have gone back and forth since day one. On
these channels over here. So we I mean we started
off like going back and forth with them RPM before
they became Legacy and Who's the forth front row a lot.
(28:54):
We created like a memoirs out of it for the
off season for fun, like.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
They it appreciates too and Rash.
Speaker 7 (29:00):
Yeah, yeah, so it's it's fun to have them respond
because you're like, you know, it's I think as a fan,
like you enjoy seeing your favorite teams, your favorite driver's respond.
That's kind of what you're getting on social media for
besides updates, is you want to be entertained, and you
know it's fun to watch that. But yeah, they have
the same mentality as us in a way where you
know they're laid back and relax and you know, posting
(29:22):
memes half the time. So they kind of fit our
vibe in a way. So we feel comfortable. Like we'll
text back and forth like hey, you know you're gonna
I'm gonna send this back like you guys cool with it?
Speaker 6 (29:30):
Like yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 7 (29:31):
He texted me a video of like our picker guys
playing frisbee at Vegas or something. He's like, can we
post this? Like is that fine? I'm like yeah, like
it's cool, Like that's all. It's all good, no problem,
but yeah, it's just it's having that good relationship with
some other people in the garagery. I think that helps
make it more comfortable. But also like same vibe.
Speaker 6 (29:49):
I will add to that.
Speaker 8 (29:50):
Garrett is a little bit on my no no list
because I forget when this was. There was a year
ago or something like that. He posted literally a photo
of me the pit box like I was doing something
and I was like, and I saw this from the
colleague account. I think Eli tweeted at me or something
or you know, sending the group chet and I was like,
why are you posting me on the colleague account?
Speaker 6 (30:12):
But they're all great guys. We love interacting with them.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
A couple more things for y'all. We talked about engagement
and how you've seen your numbers grow. Brandon, I'll toss
this one back to you first to start. How do
you all determine basically, is there a return on investment here?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Right?
Speaker 6 (30:29):
Like?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Because I feel like in racing, of course that's a
big thing. So does that apply to social media and
what would be the return on investment here with these accounts?
Speaker 5 (30:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (30:39):
No, it definitely applies. It's a good question. Like I
would tell you that every week in our weekly meeting
when we talk about, hey, here's what we're gonna do,
we also go back to the prior week and we
look and see, did we get a million impressions on
just for this one car? Like we thought, right, and
maybe we got eight hundred and fifty thousand, And then
you know there might be an obvious reason why there
might not be. But I mean, yeah, there's obviously metrics
(31:01):
that we look at, and you know, end of the day,
our reports and our numbers get sent back to our sponsors,
and you know they might not be as nerdy about it,
but you know we're we're tracking it in more than
one way. So if if we can brag to them,
hey we got you x numbers across this month or
this year or whatever that is, we're all pulling the
same rope. You know, in some way, it's just a
(31:22):
matter of who the a tension might be on one week.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
Versus the other.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
So yeah, we track it for sure. It's you know,
it's just part of the deal. And yeah, I'll let
Elijah kind of speak more specifically there on that piece.
Speaker 7 (31:36):
Yeah, I know you hed some good stuff. I think obviously,
like we have partners that are the only reason our
doors are open, you know, to a point, right, they
fund our teams, So we're just another branch of marketing
at the end of the day. But we don't we
don't want to come across like that to our audience
because I feel like NASCAR fans know sponsors are on
(31:57):
their favorite driver's race car and they want to associate
with those brands. But people all also know when they're
being advertised to, so we try to keep it unless
it's something where it's NASCAR traditional like this is the
number six, you know, Castro, edge Ford, Mustang Dark Cord,
like you know, we try to keep it very casual
and let the brand association kind of build through the
fact that we're not trying. We're trying to advertise to
(32:18):
you as much as we can, but also like do
it subtly if that makes sense, Like you know, we
try to throw subtle partner logos and different things. We
try to let the text be as you know, sometimes
just condensed as it can be, and let the logos
and the picture speak for itself to still drive value
(32:38):
and do content that's based on the partner, but try
to just make it, make it subtle at the end
of the day. And it's a tough balance because when
we started this whole thing, like for RFK and twenty
twenty two, if we got four hundred thousand impressions a
week for a partner on their car there Tuesday to
Monday cycle Tuesday before the race to Monday after the race,
that was success. Now we're at the point where if
(33:00):
we don't get a million for the week, it's like,
all right, well we got to figure out someone differently
next time, or what happened, or did we wreck out
on lap one? Did we miss something during the week,
it's more than doubled, like our standards in more than
doubled on that. And when we go back, like, for instance,
we had a race I think in Vegas twenty twenty
two and we started with King Zawaian where they didn't
(33:23):
really get shown on the broadcast much and they went
back to report it and they're like, we really don't
have much TV value. All of the value was from
social and they're like, guys, like you did a phenomenal
job on social, Like we needed that to have that
value to make sense for the partnership and that's helped
translate to better sales for them, and they talked about
that and a partner summit we had, and that's when
(33:44):
you're like, whoa Like sometimes the memes here really do
make a difference at the end of the day. All
the you know, shot photos and videos of the car,
all that stuff is necessary, but like sometimes it's that
stuff where you're like, all right, like my job, I
knew how to purpose, but like you get remind ended of,
you know, where that value comes from from someone you
might forget is pulling it.
Speaker 8 (34:05):
Yeah, I'll add to that. I mean King Sawaiian has
been kind of the gold standard in terms of like
being good with our social media. So like, you know,
partners are the lifeblood of NASCAR, So being able to
yes engagements is one thing. But the fact that we
can interact with Kings Hawaiian on social and have that
(34:26):
kind of you know, playful mentality, they love it, and
so it's really cool to you know, have partners and
this is all of our partners. They kind of understand
how we run our social and play into it and
want to be a part of it, I know, fast
and all. For instance, they actually just hired someone to
(34:47):
kind of help take over their social and make it
more I don't know if it's more our style, but
kind of they're going to start interacting with us more
on social. They're going to have cool ideas. So we
were actually in a planning meeting with them was that
last week, and uh I was He's like, yeah, I
got like twenty six ideas that you know, we're going
to do for production day. And I was like, I
want to see these cause, like, you know, I'm excited.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Who spends the most time online with all of this?
Because again, these pages are very active during the week,
obviously during race weekend, but it seems like, again there's
no there's almost like no downtime because you guys are
either quick on the draw with something or there's there's
constant updates from these pages. So how much who's on
are the most? Who's online with the most?
Speaker 7 (35:30):
Oh yeah, you gotta say that line of my wife,
she would one hundred and ten percent agree with you.
She's like, oh my gosh. She's just like like it's
a NonStop job, which is funny because she is a
social ab and for Linel, so she's like mine's not NonStop,
but like I understand it a little bit, but yeah, no,
you're right, it's a social never sleeps is our mentality.
You kind of always got to be on all of
(35:51):
us do in a way like Brandon being more pr centric,
Like it could be something the drivers need. I could
be like Thomas, we got to come in and shoot
this at six am tomorrow they're starting to wrap the
car for Asmar at six am. There's there's all sorts
of stuff. But I've been able to spend the most
time on the channels, and that's not at all discount
(36:13):
what Thomas and brandad to be able to help, because
no one person can do this. I enjoy spending time
with the community and learning about what the fans' interests are.
And for me, like I spent all of my high
school and college years on the opposite side of the phone,
i'll call it, and I was consuming all this content
(36:33):
from race teams and from drivers and from personalities you know,
Nascarcasm before he was hired by NASCAR, and the Orange
Cone and the Mini Chad Nascar Wonka and all the
fun personalities like they were like my social media idols,
i'll call them in a way like I always thought
they were hilarious and all that time consuming it. Now
I'm like on the other end, I'm like, oh, I
(36:54):
should just post what I wanted to see back then,
or how can I frame this? The problem is kind
of like you mentioned it being on all at You're like,
we're doing this for thirty eight weeks a year, and
when you get that photo of the car in the
shop in week twenty three or right now even thirty five,
You're like, oh my gosh, like how can we do
this different if we're not hunting for the championship and
we're hyping that up, Like what can we do different?
(37:16):
That's that's just not repetitive. It's like you you kind
of just want the season to end the sense where
you want to reset, refresh and been like I need
new paint schemes, I need new fire suits, I need
new everything, Like something to spark this engagement again because
we're just kind of like going on and on. So no,
it's it's it's fun the overall.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Uh. To wrap things up, I want to give each
of you a chance to answer this. Thomas, I'll start
with you, and I'm kind of putting you all on
the spot here, so hopefully something comes to mind.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
But what's say, what's an update.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Or a gift or a meme or or a post,
just something that you're the most proud of or you
got you maybe just personally got a kick out of
being able to be a part of and share.
Speaker 6 (37:56):
Uh. I have two examples.
Speaker 8 (37:58):
So the first tweet that I think it was the
first tweet I ever said on the on the RfR
account at the time, was back in twenty twenty one.
I saw this photo of I don't even know what
it was, a car, but they had like custom fabricated
all the bumpers and stuff, and it looked like an
(38:19):
inflated balloon, like an overinflated tire, you know where it
has this huge bulbs in it. And so I uh
I commented something.
Speaker 6 (38:27):
Like or coat tweeted it with.
Speaker 8 (38:30):
Oh what was it was like Lightning m queen when
he gets his wisdom teeth removed or something like that,
and it went, it blew up, and I think I
was checking my phone like all the time.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
I was like, Oh, this is awesome.
Speaker 8 (38:41):
Like this is you know, people are actually like that tweet,
that's awesome. And then my second one is uh. Around
the same timeframe, when we weren't running well, there was
this guy, I forget what it was, like Corvette Man
one two four or something like that. He said something
and it just like it was it was just too
(39:02):
much at that day, and so I snapped back at
him and I don't remember exactly what I said. Oh
he was using an analogy.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (39:10):
I remember this because someone texted me like, bro, you
killed him. I'm like, that wasn't me.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
It was an analogy.
Speaker 8 (39:17):
He was like, rfk uh rfk is like the ugly
girl at the prom dance and and oh this was
over paint schemes.
Speaker 6 (39:26):
This is when the number was moving forward.
Speaker 8 (39:28):
Yes, and and he was like the paint scheme we
revealed was like, yeah, it's the ugly girl.
Speaker 6 (39:34):
At prom dance you don't want.
Speaker 8 (39:35):
To dance with. And the at the time it was there,
it was RPM.
Speaker 6 (39:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
Is RPM had posted their forty three scheme and he's like,
in the forty three scheme, is you know the the
prom queen? And I responded back, in this analogy, you
must be the kid who can't get either girl.
Speaker 7 (39:53):
And that was most sad.
Speaker 5 (39:57):
I don't remember that that is savage.
Speaker 8 (39:59):
Yeah, I've actually tried to suppress that until now because
I was a little worried. I was I was gonna
get fired for that one.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
And you still stand on your two feet, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (40:12):
A little worried. Who's gonna listen to this now?
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Yeah, So I'll let Elijah go last because I definitely can't.
I don't have specific examples, and part of that is
the reason why I'm the least on the main RFK
keys among these three. But I do run our team
accounts a lot, which are you know, those are the
accounts that we use for more like traditional race updates.
They're more weekend based. We really don't put a whole
(40:37):
lot on those during the week But for the most part,
I'm running them, you know, I would say seventy five
eighty percent of the time. And at some point, like
I don't know, the last three, four or five years,
I'm like, all right, this is just how many times
can you say, laugh eighty we pitted for four tires,
So I'm like, you know, what, screw it. Just like
the same thing we've been talking about, you got to
keep pushing the needle. So I've gotten salty on those.
(40:59):
I've gotten two soft a handful of times. But it's
it's kind of fun. It's like my favorite thing because
you know, something could happen, Like I wasn't at the Rovo,
but if I was, I would have posted from the
six six account. Well we got dumped by the seventy
seven again, like for the third time, I would I
would not have taken the you know, towing the line
approach that Alatta did.
Speaker 5 (41:17):
That's just what I would have done. And you know,
every now and then.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
If it's if it's the right uh saltiness, you'll get
some decent engagement fro an account with way less followers.
So it's kind of fun, honestly, and you know, you
can't do it too many times because then you really
get your handslap.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
But at any rate, that that's my most enjoyable moments.
Speaker 8 (41:34):
What was that YouTube account that we had that feud
with last year?
Speaker 7 (41:39):
Oh my gosh, yeah, I can't think of his name.
Rf Yeah, oh yeah, this guy's got okay. So nrf
was his YouTube account that would make consistently bad takes
all the time, and they ended up saying something about,
you know, RFK is just not that good and this
(42:02):
and that and we're just starting out and we ended
up roasting them like really bad on Twitter, and oh
he said something Okay, So we ran we did a
deal and we had a sponsor Valot Defense and then
Fast and All, and we ran the same paint scheme
on both cars for at least Volet Defense, but for
Fast and All they kind of inverted them basically had
(42:23):
it was like look like F one. So this guy
was like, oh my gosh, like why would you run
the same pain schemer, same sponsor on two cars in
the same race. That makes makes no sense financially or
from a business standpoint, like you're just losing money. And
we were just like, dude, like this, who are you,
like the CEO of this company making this decision? Like
(42:43):
that's double the exposure in a race for them at
the end of the day. So we ended up trolling
them and it caught on to where like a bunch
of teams and different accounts kept saying like this isn't
F one and they'd have like two cars or two
things or the exact same and it'd be all ins
is a NASCAR and stuff. So that went on for
like six to eight maybe if you tweeted, but this
(43:03):
is an F one now someone would still catch on
to it, which was funny.
Speaker 8 (43:08):
And there was the part two to that because later
later I think it was the his his update for
the twenty twenty three season, so this was in twenty
twenty two, twenty three. He was like, RFK has like
specifically called out the social accounts on r f K
and we're like, okay, like we we gotta you know,
gotta tat back and yeah, I don't. I don't remember
(43:29):
exactly what we said, but I.
Speaker 7 (43:32):
Forget, I gotta be apologized to listen to go ahead.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
It was the it was the top gear beam.
Speaker 7 (43:36):
It was oh yeah yeah, so it was uh we
we anyway, yeah, we clipped the part uh where he's
he was like, yeah, RFK Twitter is just terrible, and
we coat tweeted it and said, uh uh it was.
It was a video Jimmy Clarkson where he's well anyway,
he's like, oh nrf was like here again, Oh well, anyway,
(43:57):
I'm gonna apologize though, because I I I think spending
the most time in the account, Like I forget, honestly
half the stuff we put out. If I'm gonna be honest,
I could recall some campaigns that were my favorite, But
like tweets in general, sometimes you have those ones that
really just come together where you're like you're waiting for
that moment, Like you have that wind graphic, you have
that copy, you have everything that's perfect, kind of like
(44:20):
the Darlington throwback thing. We had everything perfect and it
actually worked.
Speaker 6 (44:24):
That's a lot.
Speaker 7 (44:25):
That's the thing I think all of people don't see
is like we have so much stuff prepared half the
time that we don't get to use because it's just
in the scenario that we won, or that we've or
with something that happened during the race, and we're like
next time.
Speaker 8 (44:38):
Yeah, that's the funny thing. So Alijah has made what
this will be number thirty five this weekend.
Speaker 7 (44:44):
Well, you have two win graphics, two Pole Graphics, two
Stage graphics every weekend, every.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
Weekend, and only two of them have gotten used. Wind graphics.
Speaker 7 (44:51):
Yeah, obviously a lot. Almost every team does that.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
But yeah, yeah, Elijah also has his meme folder and
his phone.
Speaker 5 (45:00):
Don't forget that behind the curtain.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
Yeah you both do, right, Like so talking about the
tools in your toolbox, you know, these guys pull that
out at any point and I'm like, I.
Speaker 5 (45:09):
Even sit there and I'm like, where where do we
get this stuff from? And then I call it on.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
Eventually I'm like, oh, I see what's happened here. So
you always got to stay ready.
Speaker 7 (45:16):
There's one I'll say that when Brad still hadn't won
his first ration with RFK, he had asked me if
we could make a meme of his face on this
the gift where the Undertaker pops back up from the
dead and then I forget who he was facing, but
the dudes just like all shot, like how was he alive?
He's like, can you put my face on there? Like
(45:37):
when I finally win, like I know it's going to happen,
and I'm like, all right. So we did that, and
then we put like the other thirty nine drivers and
the guy who is all scared because Brad's back, and
that stayed in the meme folder for longer than I
think we both would have liked it too, but it
finally popped out after Darlington, along with the Larry macmeme.
You're like, man, two and a half years, like, you
just keep building your meme folder up. It's it's that's
(46:00):
the most fun part when it comes together and you're like,
it's like a perfect day, like people in social media
like wish they had this opportunity, and we get it
today and then next week probably what happened, but today's cool.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Just like any other part of a race team, you
have to be prepared for the moment when it comes.
Speaker 7 (46:16):
Absolutely got it.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
All right, gentlemen, I'm gonna let you go. I greatly
enjoyed this conversation and I said it earlier, but thank
you so much for sticking with me. I know we
rescheduled a couple of times, but I'm really glad we
got to do this, and UH count me in as
a fan. I love the way that you guys have
done the accounts. I love to see what's gonna come next,
so I appreciate the time and keep having fun with it.
Speaker 7 (46:38):
Yes, thank you, Thank you, Kelly, thanks for spotlighting.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Us once again. Thank you Brandon, Thomas and Elijah for
coming on the show. Another member of the group is
Kevin Woods, as you heard them mentioned, and I wish
Kevin could have joined us for the conversation, but your
three compadres held down the fort and we had a time.
I also want to thank Steve Newmark, who I approached
(47:02):
originally with this idea, and he was all for it
and really loved the fact that his team could be
highlighted and talked about how much they put into doing
this and delivering content. So thank you everyone in RFK
Racing for your time and coming on the podcast. If
you enjoyed the episodes, please leave a rating and review.
Go to social media and interact with me there. I
am all over the place, and the easiest way to
(47:24):
find me is go into the show description of this episode.
There is a link to link tree and that will
show you all of my social media handles. So wherever
you are most comfortable and interact the most, you will
likely find me there. And I love hearing your feedback
about the podcast. Next week, we are going to wrap
up the season with one more episode. We're going to
visit and sit down with Carson Hosovar. He is the
(47:46):
twenty twenty four NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year.
Carson and I sat down recently to dig into his
season and everything that went into winning an award and
how much it means to him. That will be next
week as we wrap up this season. Another You're down
of the Racing writers podcast
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Racing Writers Podcast. I'm your host,
Kelly Krandell. We have three guests joining us today from
RFK Racing, Brandon Lee, Thomas Burfield, and Elijah Burke. They
are part of the team that runs the social media
content for RFK Racing, the main accounts as well as
the two driver accounts, and I just get a kick
out of it, and I wanted to highlight them and
(00:29):
how they go about doing their job because I feel
like it's a little bit different than maybe what most
teams are doing on social media. You have your weekly updates,
which is great content during the week paint schemes, news,
whatever that is to promote the team, the sponsors, and
then during race weekend, I feel like is where they
really stand out, using memes, gifts, emojis, the latest social
(00:51):
media trends, and just being honest with their updates about
how their team and their drivers are doing. So this
is a really fun con and I'm really glad I
got to highlight these three and do something a little
bit different and I think we had a great time.
So I hope you enjoy it. I hope you learn
something new and go behind the scenes of what it's
like at a race team to deliver social media content
(01:13):
for you, the race fans. Let's jump into it. Here
is Brandon, Thomas, and Elijah on the Racing Writers Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Let's just jump into the conversation. Bring you guys in.
So we have Thomas, Elijah and Brandon here, and I want.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
To start by just each.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Of you going around and kind of just giving a
little bit of background on how you got to RFK racing.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
That way, the listeners can kind of start.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
To hopefully distinguish your voices as we jump into the conversation.
So Brandon, let's start with you, because I think you're
probably the most tenured guy there.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
So yeah, fair enough, I can do that. So, I, uh,
this is my seventh race season.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Here at RFK.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I've only ever worked for this race team in my
time in the sport. I got in and I guess
a less traditional way. I pretty much saw a job
on LinkedIn back in twenty eighteen and I applied for it.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
But little did I know at the time. The story goes.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
That my now boss who oversees all of us and
runs us operation, Kevin Woods, his best friend from high school,
Russell Branham, who formerly ran p R at Talladega. Those
two obviously were familiar with each other. I applied for
the job. I called Russell because I knew him at
the time, didn't obviously know Kevin, and I was like, hey, man,
I know we have like a loose relationship, but can
you tell me what this is about. And he's like, oh,
(02:28):
I know exactly what it is, and he told me,
gave me the spiel, and within like two days I
was interviewing. So I guess you can say mine was
because I knew somebody in a way, although one I
applied for it, I had no idea who I really knew,
if that makes sense. So yeah, that was pretty much
my simple way of getting in.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Elijah, let's jump to you.
Speaker 6 (02:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (02:47):
So I grew up in City, New York and Rochester,
and I was a big NASCAR fan growing up, and
I always wanted to work in it. I had gone
to college and had no idea what I what like
department of Racing and what section of NASCAR I wanted
to work in. So I just went for business degree
and when I graduated, I had a video of my
graduation speech in a NASCAR style. Go I'll call it
(03:10):
semi viral because people are like, oh, ye had a
video went viral, and I'm like trying to explain to people, like, yeah,
I've never seen that before, and I'm like, it went
viral enough for NASCAR on Fox and NBC and all
them to see it. And at that point, Ganassi had
hired me for sales and that didn't last long because
I sucked at it. So I started talking to the
girl on social media there a lot more and she
(03:31):
was like, you got great ideas, so like you can
work here as a hybrid. Ended up being that full
time for a couple of years, and then eventually when
they got bought out by track House, this opportunity here
to be social media manager at RFK had opened up.
I saw it on LinkedIn. Everyone was kind of on
LinkedIn almost every day at that job, trying to find
a new position. So I applied for it within I
(03:52):
think like forty eight hours. I'm pretty sure I got
the job. Interviewed actually with Thomas and Brand and it
was kind of funny being full circle here now. So yeah,
I've been here for a little over three years now
and love it. We get to do a lot of
fun stuff on the RFK channels.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
We're gonna talk about that fun stuff here in a minute,
all right, Thomas, right, not Tommy, Not tom I don't
want to insult you by shortening your name, so I'm
just gonna call you Thomas until you tell me otherwise.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (04:16):
I think the only person that's called me Tommy is
my sister at a very young age, and I love
her to death, but she still annoys the snot out
of me.
Speaker 6 (04:24):
So yeah, I prefer just Thomas.
Speaker 8 (04:27):
Yeah, but I'm kind of like Brandon in the sense
that I really like I had no experience in racing.
It was almost to the point where I would see
a NASCAR broadcast on and be like, ew, why is
someone watching that? And then you know, through college and
just kind of applied to a job on LinkedIn and
it was funny. The night before I interviewed for this role,
(04:48):
I watched four Versus Ferrari and I was like, okay,
wait a minute, like this is kind of cool, and
applied for the job, got interviewed, and ended up here
and been here now three years and have just fallen
head over heels in love with motorsports. So it's been
eye opening how much different it is and how the
(05:10):
uniqueness makes it so much more fun to watch than, say,
you know, a typical soccer baseball broadcast.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
For me, Thomas, let me stick with you on that,
because I wanted to ask about that because when I
was looking around, I came upon your LinkedIn page and
I saw that you came from basically what college athletics
into motorsports. So that's what I wanted to ask about.
Is that transition going from a stick and ball sports
and bringing your skill set and your mindset from that
(05:41):
to a race team.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
How has that been?
Speaker 8 (05:43):
So I'll be honest, My first race was Indianapolis Road Course,
the inaugural one in twenty twenty one, and it was
so strange for me because I was so kind of like,
you know, nervous, is my first time there. I didn't
know what to expect, and then the cars hit the
track and for some reason, I just felt right at
home and I was just like the same feeling of
(06:03):
you know, you have to capture the moment, you have
to be in the right place at the right time
and get your settings right on your camera and kind
of all of that same experience that you have in
a stick and ball sport, whether it be in a
basketball court or a football field, whatever it may be,
that same principles apply in motorsports to a degree, and
so it was it was really cool that, Like I
(06:24):
was sitting there and I was like, I don't know
what to experience, and then cars at the track for
the first time for practice.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
I'm like, Okay, this is going to be cool. This
is awesome.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
All right, So as we jump into the social media stuff,
you know, I may not direct a question specifically to someone,
so everybody just jump in. If you all got something
to say. I want this to be again, you all
do this, so I want everybody to have their time
to speak. So all right, we know that we have
the main RFK Racing account and then of course the
accounts for each of the drivers. So as we dig
in here, I guess the first thing is what's the
(06:55):
process here when there's multiple people trying to work on
these accounts and maybe you all have ideas or something
comes to mind, So whoever wants to kick it off,
just where do you even begin when you guys have
multiple accounts and multiple people with ideas.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
Thank god, I'll take that one to start. That's a
great question. It's never the same thing two times in
a row. Usually our baseline is we have like a
Tuesday meeting at nine am where we kind of take
an hour hour and a half to go over like, hey,
here's our schedule for the week. You know, here's our
paint preview. Today, we have built Submarines video. Tomorrow we
have our throwback Thursday tech talk idea something like that.
(07:32):
That kind of gives us structure for the week so
we can say, you know, we're making sure we got
the partner content, our main content for the race week
in general. But then when those ideas come up where
it's like man, I saw this TikTok trend or I
saw this Instagram trend. We have a really good chemistry
in the sensor. We just have a group chat. We
have several, to be honest. There's an Instagram one, there's
(07:52):
a I Messages one. There's one with our boss Kevin,
there's one without our bossy. Like there's this individual back
and forth. We will just send things all day long
and be like, hey, like we saw so and so
in college athletics did this, we should do that, or
oh I saw so and so at you know, Gibbs
did this, Like man, I wish we thought of this first.
Can we reinvent this in a different way? So figuring
(08:14):
out that and then once we we all kind of
look at it, like Thomas looks at it from a
different perspective than I will, and then Brandon will. So
if Thomas has an idea, sometimes it'll be like, hey,
like can we do this? And then I'm like, okay,
how can we position it for social Or I'll say, okay,
I have this idea, Thomas, can you make this happen
behind the camera or what do you think because in
(08:36):
this scenario, right, you're posting to thousands, hundreds of thousands
of people sometimes right, if not millions, and you're like,
you want to make sure you have other perspectives usually
before you ship it out there, because if like the
three of us find it funny, usually a bunch of
people will find it funny usually, and then if like
one of us finds it funny, then one's like, yeah,
(08:57):
I don't know about that. Then we're like, all right,
let's se if we can refine it. So it's usually
just like a process of just trusting what each other
thinks for the most part, and just not being afraid
to just shoot something over. We never feel like the
other person's gonna say, ah, you're dumb if that that
idea is terrible. It's more like we just laugh it
off or whatever, we figure out a way to do it.
So it's very all over the.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Place, Brandon, you were laughing there when he starts talking
about all the different chats that have gone on. So
it sounds like during the week it can get pretty crazy.
But what about before I circle back more on that,
what about race weekend and then when it comes to
updates and how that works for each of the accounts.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Yeah, one note on that.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
I was going to say, like, we pretty much always
have a notification that's not open on any given It's
like teams, I message this, I message like that's just
the way it is, which is a good thing.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Obviously it means we're communicating.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
But yeah, I mean once we get to race weekends,
like our team that's touching social you're pretty much looking
at it.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
With the addition of Kevin Wood sprinkled in there.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
I mean, we're you know, we don't have an operation
where we have four shooters and then three social media
people and then pr people Like this is our group.
So The interesting thing with that is is once we're
at the track, you know, it's pretty much a combination
of one of the three or four of us, but
really only two at a time.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
I mean there's.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Cases where certainly the three of us go to the
track together, but once we get well into the season,
you know, it's either myself and Thomas, myself and Elijah
woods in Elijah, you know.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
Whatever the combo is.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
And at that point, all we're doing is working off
of that list that Eli talked about from Tuesday, and
then we're just executing. And once we get to the
racetrack and you know, you kind of have your styles
and the ways you like to voice things and tone
and stuff like that. But yeah, it's I guess it's
just an efficiency thing and making sure we know, you know,
how we're supposed to do it every week, and once
you do it a few times, it's just a matter
(10:43):
of all, right, well who's on the on the keys
and making sure we're doing it right.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So is there an approval process? I'm assuming that because
you all have there's multiple people with access and with
these accounts that I assume and correct me if I'm wrong, Like,
what's the process when an idea comes up, is it
just I'm not going to fire it off on my own.
Is it something where those chats come into play to
where you all can shoot around the idea before whatever
(11:07):
it is it's going to go out to everybody.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Yeah, for sure, there is. I mean it, it depends
on what it is. Right Like, I will say, here's
the one thing that we're really good at. We trust
each other a lot, and because of that, there's just
a certain level threshold of things that we don't really
have to you know, send each other. We just know
is this gonna fly or not. But once you get
past that threshold of like, hey, this might be a
little out there, like is this too much, that's when
(11:31):
the you know, the chats come in. And certainly that
comes up all the time when all of these guys
weigh in on maybe examples or their thoughts. But it
definitely happens, don't get me wrong. But there's also just
a minimum that you just trust each other to do.
Then at that point you're just talking about you know,
bigger ideas and scenarios.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Thomas, it seemed like you're gonna go ahead.
Speaker 6 (11:51):
We definitely.
Speaker 8 (11:52):
Our chemistry is is almost scary you just you asked
about approvals. I mean, like we don't really have an
approval structure. Like it's kind of like I said, we'll
send these ideas and kind of bounce them off each other,
and we'll mold it into kind of what we want
it to be, and then we just kind of go
execute on it and we'll pass it around kind of
the three of us, and if we feel like it needs.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
Approval, we'll go to Woods.
Speaker 8 (12:13):
But for the most part, it's like we have enough
experience that and we've got our hands slapped enough that
you know, we know where the line is. But you know,
it's every once in a while you'll send something and
you'll be like, I don't know if this is gonna fly.
I'll send it in the group chat and you're like,
I don't know if this is gonna fly. And if
you get at least one no back from from one
of these two, you're like, okay, all right, I'm too far.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
My hand's recovered from the earlier days. Overall, you find
the line, and now we're at a point where like
we've kind of like found the line. Once in a
while you may step over it and you kind of
have to be in social you gotta be a little
edgy to be good. But the approval process, like Brandon
touched on a minute ago, like we do run pretty
lean overall, and when you have that and you're working
(12:55):
in social where you have to capitalize on the moment
most of the times, Like if a big incident happens
on track and we want to have like a reaction meme,
sometimes you just got to trust your gut and you're like,
all right, if this isn't going to get me fired,
and this isn't going to take a bunch of people off,
like if I've checked those two boxes off, Like you
got to have your own judgment, and that's what I
(13:17):
think makes all of us good in our positions. We
usually can have pretty good judgment about stuff on things.
And obviously again like you find the lines sometimes going
maybe something you're not even thinking about that comes up
later like oh sorry, Like it was hard to process
all that in the moment, But you don't necessarily have
all the time, nor can you when you're like all right,
(13:38):
I don't really want to have an additional three or
four hours of waiting sometimes for someone to get back
to you on something. It's like, hey, we empower you
to say this is something that's worth putting out, and
you know, I think it's shown that we've done some
really good stuff overall and benefited. We benefited from it
pretty highly.
Speaker 8 (13:57):
I'd also say that the sandbox we play in is
very large, so it's like, you know, I talk about
getting your handslapped, but it's like, you know, both I
gotta give credit to both Steve Newmark and Kevin Wood's
our boss for just kind of letting us do our thing.
You know, we we have a very long leash, and
so it's a huge credit to them for seeing the
value of doing that.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
So it's really cool and another way to show how
that trickles down Kelly in terms of memes, Like I
would say more than half the time, we'll be during
the race, and you know, I might not always see
what we posted on rfka account, and I'll see a
meme and I'll go, oh my gosh, we really posted that,
and I'll think to myself, I should probably say something,
but I'm like, no, We've done way worse, and then
I just move on because I know, like that's the
(14:39):
tone we've set, right, So if nobody was upset about
it twelve months ago. We are they going to be
upset about it now? And you know, you go back
later and you're like, oh, they got a lot of impressions.
That was pretty good. But yeah, rarely are we crossing
the line. You know, we know when we do it right,
like we know when we're pushing the needle.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
But yeah, it's a really big sandbox at Thomas's point.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, So to that point, Brandon, let me start this
question with you. I want to talk specifically here for
a minute about the Inn Race updates because I feel like, listen,
as you guys said, there's tons of stuff that you
guys can do during the week, right and you can
lay things out and have fun with that. But I
love I feel like the Inn Race updates because you guys,
in my opinion, stand out more from a lot of
(15:17):
the teams because of the way in which the Twitter
accounts are giving the updates.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
So Brandon, let me.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Start with you on that in the sense of was
it a conscious shift at all, because it seemed like
it's morphed over the years from straightforward updates to we're
just gonna have fun with this and if we're having
a bad day, we're having a bad day. If something happens,
we're gonna treat this almost like an AOL chat room, right,
Like we're gonna throw gifts in there, We're gonna throw
emojis in there.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Things are bad. Hey, we admins, we're feeling it too.
We're angry too. Was just shift or did that just happen?
Speaker 5 (15:49):
Yeah, no, it was.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
That's just the nature of like we realized that, hey,
most people aren't really going to Twitter.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
There's a very small audience.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
I feel like personally that's actually going to Twitter for
that true race up right, Like most people are paying attention,
they're in the moment, they're seeing it from other forms.
So I think part of it is like we realize
that we don't really need to just be so factual
that we're not being entertaining in a way.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
So that's where our tone kind of came from.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
And I'm gonna let mostly a log to Thomas speak
to that because that is definitely more their speed. They're
the ones usually doing that. But yeah, I mean it's true,
like we realized that why would we not be entertaining
and edgy and be more like that AOL chat room
when you know, why be the other because I don't
know it. Obviously, it's proven that, you know, people have
(16:33):
caught onto it and noticed it, so I'd say it's
play well.
Speaker 7 (16:35):
Yeah, to Brandon's point, I think that social media, at
least NASCAR social media, right, you have such a big
community feel to it at the end of the day,
like you feel like you log onto x X is
your main point of communication during the race, at least
for us, right, because it's just it's like a giant
text threat in a way, and we try to convey
(16:57):
the race like we're watching it with you, right. We
don't just comment on stuff that's happening to us. Now,
that's where the fine line comes in because you don't
you know, you're not trying to take off other teams
or your competitors or that's action about or anything. But
you kind of you can when a big crash happens
or something. We might not be involved, but we know
everyone's about to go on social media, especially Twitter and
(17:18):
either say something or see what was said, so we're
like we need to drop that reaction in there. On
top of that, I think people like in the media,
for instance, like apocriss or a glock or yourself like
those people, the media members have done such a good
job of being the source of overall updates for the
race unless you're talking about like something so team specific,
(17:41):
like you know, we lost two spots on pit road
or something right that the broadcast may not show that.
I'm like, that's kind of where people go for their
updates now, Like I have Pockers' notifications on, my wife
has Pockets notifications on, Like they're just like that's how
we get like our news in racing most of the time,
and that's how it happens during the race. So when
we're looking that as update channel, we're like on the
(18:02):
main account most of the time. It's like we don't
necessarily need those, and we've seen a lot of other
teams get away from them at the end of the day.
But the other tough balance is, right, it's NASCAR is
totally different than your sticking ball sports in the sense
that you have your thirty eight teams out there right
and not everything that happens to you is gonna get shown.
So it's like we got to find out a way
(18:23):
to like still tell our story and what's happening, but
also just be casual. The jumbo tron mentality, as Woods
would would say, which I really like. And that's really
I think played well for us because people are like,
we look forward to seeing what you guys are gonna
post during the race. We've heard many times, and I'm like,
that's cool because that's like, all right now, I don't
(18:43):
feel like at first for me at least, come over
here is like, man, we're really posting a lot of
stuff during the race. It's like not my traditional race updates.
We did it Ganassi, and then all of a sudden,
I'm like, oh wait, people want to see this. So
we just kept doing it more and more, and you're like,
it works.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Tom has anything to add to that.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I like this whole perspective of again, I feel like
you have to adapt with the times, but also just
have fun with it. Because Elijah you said there, it's
like we're watching the race with you.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I really like that.
Speaker 8 (19:10):
Yeah, I mean Eli covered it there. I mean that's
that's exactly we're the scoreboard mentality. We're trying to be
as entertaining as possible because I mean, Eli nailed it.
I mean, Pokers and you guys, the members of the
media have just done such a good job of telling
the story of everyone's story.
Speaker 6 (19:27):
Of the race. So it's like we have to be
we have.
Speaker 8 (19:29):
To find a way to stick out, We have to
find a way to garner attention that is going to
entertain them and entertain the audience just as much.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
As it is going to inform them.
Speaker 8 (19:39):
So it's just trying to repackage, you know, information in
an entertaining way.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So yeah, so Elijah puts it as we're watching the
race with you, You guys did a great job of
kind of explaining your mentality there. It's to me, I
look at it as the RFK accounts are. They're honest.
It's lighthearted at times, it could be serious at times,
and then there's times where I said a minute ago
that it's emotional too, right, like you guys live and
(20:07):
die of course by your teams. Whoever wants to kick
this one off, how many times have you had to
control maybe your personal emotions of just like how frustrating
it is when something happens.
Speaker 7 (20:20):
Right, Oh my gosh, who wants to go first on
that one?
Speaker 6 (20:24):
I'll take it first.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
I mean it's I don't know, you catch yourself, like
I'll say specifically, it's like there have been. So I
was on the sticks for Homestead this weekend and we
didn't exactly have a fantastic race, and so it was
trying to find ways to And I mean we were here,
all three of us were here in the RfR days,
(20:46):
and so we knew what it was like to not
run as well as we have been recently.
Speaker 6 (20:52):
So you know, we have some experience with that.
Speaker 8 (20:54):
But it's I don't know, you just you're trying to
find ways to find the positives, like I said, repackage.
Speaker 6 (21:02):
Them in ways.
Speaker 8 (21:03):
So I'll give you an example the Bees situation with
the spot erstand. I tweeted out something I was a
little bit upset. I thought this would get more traction,
but tweeted out the Barry B. Benson, which is from
the Bee movie. I tweeted out that he made an
appearance at the race. He was one of the honored guests.
And so it's just like things like that that, you know,
(21:24):
you try and not let the race affect you because
you still have to be that voice for voice of
entertainment for the audience.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
That's honestly taken back to the RfR days is where
this mentality came from. Where the sandbox came from because
Kevin Woods and Brandon I know you were here for
more of that. Will will tell you that like when
we weren't having our best days performance wise, like you
had to make up for it, and it's like it's
not fun for anyone when you're not running well on
track and you're like, Okay, how are we gonna get
(21:55):
our social impressions and engagements and like our conversation, how
can we can cheer because we're still out here to play.
So that's where like you know, gifts and memes and
just conversation that may had nothing to do with the
race at times would come up. And we've kind of
adopted that and taken it into a kind of kind
of like a new era, but still keeping that same mentality.
(22:17):
Emotion wise, it is tough. The hardest thing is when
a call doesn't go your way or you get wrecked
and you're like all right, Like for instance, like at
the Roval, Brad got dumped twice by the seventy seven,
and you know that, like people saw it the first time,
(22:38):
people didn't see it the second time. They're like, why
did Brad just lose you know, twenty spots he was
going to have a you know, a top ten run,
and you're like, I got to communicate this and I
want to show a little bit of personality for the
account like it normally would, but I'm like, I don't
want to step over the line. And you're also mad
because you're like, we normally let our emotions show through
a little bit, but we're like, we don't want to
(22:59):
go too far, and this is ridiculous all so you
kind of I was just like the number seventy seven
has like spun bred for the second time today, like
it's factual, but it's it's a little bit salty at
the same time, and people like, oh, so that's what happened,
Like I can't believe it, blah blah blah. And you
know we're on the other and than that half the
time or sometimes too, so we get it. Like at
(23:19):
the end of the day, I think the emotion shining
through is one thing that makes us different, but I
think it helps you resonate with your fan because sports
are emotional and we want to tweet like we're you
in a way.
Speaker 8 (23:33):
I'll add to that, there's a lot of hovering over
the send button and retyping.
Speaker 7 (23:38):
There's a lot of screenshots to Brandon and Thomas, Hey,
what do you think about this? It's like hmm sure
or nah, So.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Yeah, it's pretty emotional. I mean, yeah, of course we
get spun on peer roade. I'm pissed right Like we
didn't win Kansas because for whatever reason, and then you know,
our creutee stopped making sure the finish line straight.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
You don't think we didn't take a picture of that.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Of course we did. Like of course we've posted that.
But you know, I mean, like anything else, there's a
line to walk, and we try to. But I mean
sometimes you maybe across a little bit. But of course
it's emotional. If it wasn't, then either we're not doing
it right or we're just not We're hiding it in
some ways, right, So I think to you last point,
you have to be emotional to a certain point to
(24:20):
build or relate, because if you're not relating, then you
know it's not going to be engaging content.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Brandon, let me stick with you for a second.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You guys were talking there about RfR days and kind
of how that's transitioned into what you guys are doing
right now. How has the engagement for you all with
these accounts changed from the RfR days to now in
terms of because of how you guys have Obviously performance helps, right,
but in terms of how you guys are approaching these updates.
(24:50):
Has the engagement shifted in that regard?
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, I mean it's it's really night and day different
in terms of every social metric. Kelly, I'll let a
lodg I must, you know, spit out some numbers that
they have on top of their head. But it's pretty
wild to see just how things have changed over the years.
And you know, part of that is because of our
approach and some of that obviously it is because of
our success on the racetrack. But it's amazing what can
(25:14):
happen when you when you do run better, what avenues
it opens up to, you know, being more creative because look,
i mean there's only we RaSE thirty eight times a year.
You're gonna have weeks where you ride around in fourteenth
and nothing happens, right, and there's only so much you
can do around that. So that's where the creativity comes in,
and you know, maybe posting some more updates like well
this is kind of snooze fest guys, like you know,
(25:36):
obviously there's a line not to cross there too, but
those things kind of come up. So I mean, yeah,
we've we've adapted, but it's in large part due to
the success we've been able to have. But maybe Thomas
Neelie can throw out some numbers to really show the
big difference there.
Speaker 7 (25:51):
I was literally going to print out receipts for this
stuff beforehand. I'm like, nah, like we'll just we'll wing.
I should have been prepared in gage wise. I mean,
I can tell you what we've done since we've started,
at least, like we track our stuff. We compare ourselves
against other teams in the sport. We compare ourselves against
the driver wise, other drivers, because we we handle a
(26:13):
lot of content stuff for Buscher, and it is like
I have the same mentality person I think we all
do as the guys in the shop bar, Like this
is a competition, Like we're gonna we're gonna beat them
in engagements this month, you know. And what we tracked
through sprout social overall, like I was looking at just
this year, we've increased our video views by seven hundred percent.
(26:35):
We have like I think two hundred and sixty million
on the year just views overall, which is great like impressions.
I mean we overdoubled them last year, which was overdoubled
from the year before, which was over doubled from the year.
Like every year, it just seems like impressions and engagements
go up by at least one hundred percent. It's like
if we're not getting to if we're not doubling them,
(26:57):
then it almost feels like we're you know, not we're
not reaching the heights we should be in a way.
But you know that's gonna stop at some point in
a way. But a lot of that has to do
with you know, they roush RFK decided to invest in,
you know, bringing on Thomas and I and making our
team here with Brandon Woods's mentality of allowing us to
(27:18):
do this stuff has really helped us overall. But everything
is is at least doubled. I think usually my one
thing is I'll always try to track Instagram engagements. Instagram's
like the biggest platform right now in my opinion, and
gives us a really good job of like video content,
video views, and this month, I believe we're tracking to
be ahead of them in engagements, which is like my
(27:40):
gold standard because they just churn out video content, and
I'm like, we can get a couple of things to hit,
we can beat them. We got a couple things to hit.
So like we're always watching those and seeing but like, yeah,
years versus years, it's at least one hundred percent growth
across the board every year, and I look forward to
looking back at those. It's like a racing it's like
race reference for social media nerds looking at the Sprout
(28:03):
social stats.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
That's awesome, Elijah, As you were mentioning other race teams there,
and again anybody who wants to jump in on this.
The cool thing is it seems like there's other race
teams and I think Colleague is the biggest one that
has begun to interact back with the race updates or
the even during the week of what you guys are doing.
Is that a little point of pride too that, as
you said, you guys are competitors, but it has to
(28:27):
be fun to kind of have that engagement now with
other race teams recognizing what you guys are doing.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
Yeah, no, one hundred percent. I know they're admin over
their main Admund Garrett, he's a great guy and we
both have gone back and forth since day one. On
these channels over here. So we I mean we started
off like going back and forth with them RPM before
they became Legacy and Who's the forth front row a lot.
(28:54):
We created like a memoirs out of it for the
off season for fun, like.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
They it appreciates too and Rash.
Speaker 7 (29:00):
Yeah, yeah, so it's it's fun to have them respond
because you're like, you know, it's I think as a fan,
like you enjoy seeing your favorite teams, your favorite driver's respond.
That's kind of what you're getting on social media for
besides updates, is you want to be entertained, and you
know it's fun to watch that. But yeah, they have
the same mentality as us in a way where you
know they're laid back and relax and you know, posting
(29:22):
memes half the time. So they kind of fit our
vibe in a way. So we feel comfortable. Like we'll
text back and forth like hey, you know you're gonna
I'm gonna send this back like you guys cool with it?
Speaker 6 (29:30):
Like yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 7 (29:31):
He texted me a video of like our picker guys
playing frisbee at Vegas or something. He's like, can we
post this? Like is that fine? I'm like yeah, like
it's cool, Like that's all. It's all good, no problem,
but yeah, it's just it's having that good relationship with
some other people in the garagery. I think that helps
make it more comfortable. But also like same vibe.
Speaker 6 (29:49):
I will add to that.
Speaker 8 (29:50):
Garrett is a little bit on my no no list
because I forget when this was. There was a year
ago or something like that. He posted literally a photo
of me the pit box like I was doing something
and I was like, and I saw this from the
colleague account. I think Eli tweeted at me or something
or you know, sending the group chet and I was like,
why are you posting me on the colleague account?
Speaker 6 (30:12):
But they're all great guys. We love interacting with them.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
A couple more things for y'all. We talked about engagement
and how you've seen your numbers grow. Brandon, I'll toss
this one back to you first to start. How do
you all determine basically, is there a return on investment here?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Right?
Speaker 6 (30:29):
Like?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Because I feel like in racing, of course that's a
big thing. So does that apply to social media and
what would be the return on investment here with these accounts?
Speaker 5 (30:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (30:39):
No, it definitely applies. It's a good question. Like I
would tell you that every week in our weekly meeting
when we talk about, hey, here's what we're gonna do,
we also go back to the prior week and we
look and see, did we get a million impressions on
just for this one car? Like we thought, right, and
maybe we got eight hundred and fifty thousand, And then
you know there might be an obvious reason why there
might not be. But I mean, yeah, there's obviously metrics
(31:01):
that we look at, and you know, end of the day,
our reports and our numbers get sent back to our sponsors,
and you know they might not be as nerdy about it,
but you know we're we're tracking it in more than
one way. So if if we can brag to them,
hey we got you x numbers across this month or
this year or whatever that is, we're all pulling the
same rope. You know, in some way, it's just a
(31:22):
matter of who the a tension might be on one week.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
Versus the other.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
So yeah, we track it for sure. It's you know,
it's just part of the deal. And yeah, I'll let
Elijah kind of speak more specifically there on that piece.
Speaker 7 (31:36):
Yeah, I know you hed some good stuff. I think obviously,
like we have partners that are the only reason our
doors are open, you know, to a point, right, they
fund our teams, So we're just another branch of marketing
at the end of the day. But we don't we
don't want to come across like that to our audience
because I feel like NASCAR fans know sponsors are on
(31:57):
their favorite driver's race car and they want to associate
with those brands. But people all also know when they're
being advertised to, so we try to keep it unless
it's something where it's NASCAR traditional like this is the
number six, you know, Castro, edge Ford, Mustang Dark Cord,
like you know, we try to keep it very casual
and let the brand association kind of build through the
fact that we're not trying. We're trying to advertise to
(32:18):
you as much as we can, but also like do
it subtly if that makes sense, Like you know, we
try to throw subtle partner logos and different things. We
try to let the text be as you know, sometimes
just condensed as it can be, and let the logos
and the picture speak for itself to still drive value
(32:38):
and do content that's based on the partner, but try
to just make it, make it subtle at the end
of the day. And it's a tough balance because when
we started this whole thing, like for RFK and twenty
twenty two, if we got four hundred thousand impressions a
week for a partner on their car there Tuesday to
Monday cycle Tuesday before the race to Monday after the race,
that was success. Now we're at the point where if
(33:00):
we don't get a million for the week, it's like,
all right, well we got to figure out someone differently
next time, or what happened, or did we wreck out
on lap one? Did we miss something during the week,
it's more than doubled, like our standards in more than
doubled on that. And when we go back, like, for instance,
we had a race I think in Vegas twenty twenty
two and we started with King Zawaian where they didn't
(33:23):
really get shown on the broadcast much and they went
back to report it and they're like, we really don't
have much TV value. All of the value was from
social and they're like, guys, like you did a phenomenal
job on social, Like we needed that to have that
value to make sense for the partnership and that's helped
translate to better sales for them, and they talked about
that and a partner summit we had, and that's when
(33:44):
you're like, whoa Like sometimes the memes here really do
make a difference at the end of the day. All
the you know, shot photos and videos of the car,
all that stuff is necessary, but like sometimes it's that
stuff where you're like, all right, like my job, I
knew how to purpose, but like you get remind ended of,
you know, where that value comes from from someone you
might forget is pulling it.
Speaker 8 (34:05):
Yeah, I'll add to that. I mean King Sawaiian has
been kind of the gold standard in terms of like
being good with our social media. So like, you know,
partners are the lifeblood of NASCAR, So being able to
yes engagements is one thing. But the fact that we
can interact with Kings Hawaiian on social and have that
(34:26):
kind of you know, playful mentality, they love it, and
so it's really cool to you know, have partners and
this is all of our partners. They kind of understand
how we run our social and play into it and
want to be a part of it, I know, fast
and all. For instance, they actually just hired someone to
(34:47):
kind of help take over their social and make it
more I don't know if it's more our style, but
kind of they're going to start interacting with us more
on social. They're going to have cool ideas. So we
were actually in a planning meeting with them was that
last week, and uh I was He's like, yeah, I
got like twenty six ideas that you know, we're going
to do for production day. And I was like, I
want to see these cause, like, you know, I'm excited.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Who spends the most time online with all of this?
Because again, these pages are very active during the week,
obviously during race weekend, but it seems like, again there's
no there's almost like no downtime because you guys are
either quick on the draw with something or there's there's
constant updates from these pages. So how much who's on
are the most? Who's online with the most?
Speaker 7 (35:30):
Oh yeah, you gotta say that line of my wife,
she would one hundred and ten percent agree with you.
She's like, oh my gosh. She's just like like it's
a NonStop job, which is funny because she is a
social ab and for Linel, so she's like mine's not NonStop,
but like I understand it a little bit, but yeah, no,
you're right, it's a social never sleeps is our mentality.
You kind of always got to be on all of
(35:51):
us do in a way like Brandon being more pr centric,
Like it could be something the drivers need. I could
be like Thomas, we got to come in and shoot
this at six am tomorrow they're starting to wrap the
car for Asmar at six am. There's there's all sorts
of stuff. But I've been able to spend the most
time on the channels, and that's not at all discount
(36:13):
what Thomas and brandad to be able to help, because
no one person can do this. I enjoy spending time
with the community and learning about what the fans' interests are.
And for me, like I spent all of my high
school and college years on the opposite side of the phone,
i'll call it, and I was consuming all this content
(36:33):
from race teams and from drivers and from personalities you know,
Nascarcasm before he was hired by NASCAR, and the Orange
Cone and the Mini Chad Nascar Wonka and all the
fun personalities like they were like my social media idols,
i'll call them in a way like I always thought
they were hilarious and all that time consuming it. Now
I'm like on the other end, I'm like, oh, I
(36:54):
should just post what I wanted to see back then,
or how can I frame this? The problem is kind
of like you mentioned it being on all at You're like,
we're doing this for thirty eight weeks a year, and
when you get that photo of the car in the
shop in week twenty three or right now even thirty five,
You're like, oh my gosh, like how can we do
this different if we're not hunting for the championship and
we're hyping that up, Like what can we do different?
(37:16):
That's that's just not repetitive. It's like you you kind
of just want the season to end the sense where
you want to reset, refresh and been like I need
new paint schemes, I need new fire suits, I need
new everything, Like something to spark this engagement again because
we're just kind of like going on and on. So no,
it's it's it's fun the overall.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Uh. To wrap things up, I want to give each
of you a chance to answer this. Thomas, I'll start
with you, and I'm kind of putting you all on
the spot here, so hopefully something comes to mind.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
But what's say, what's an update.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Or a gift or a meme or or a post,
just something that you're the most proud of or you
got you maybe just personally got a kick out of
being able to be a part of and share.
Speaker 6 (37:56):
Uh. I have two examples.
Speaker 8 (37:58):
So the first tweet that I think it was the
first tweet I ever said on the on the RfR
account at the time, was back in twenty twenty one.
I saw this photo of I don't even know what
it was, a car, but they had like custom fabricated
all the bumpers and stuff, and it looked like an
(38:19):
inflated balloon, like an overinflated tire, you know where it
has this huge bulbs in it. And so I uh
I commented something.
Speaker 6 (38:27):
Like or coat tweeted it with.
Speaker 8 (38:30):
Oh what was it was like Lightning m queen when
he gets his wisdom teeth removed or something like that,
and it went, it blew up, and I think I
was checking my phone like all the time.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
I was like, Oh, this is awesome.
Speaker 8 (38:41):
Like this is you know, people are actually like that tweet,
that's awesome. And then my second one is uh. Around
the same timeframe, when we weren't running well, there was
this guy, I forget what it was, like Corvette Man
one two four or something like that. He said something
and it just like it was it was just too
(39:02):
much at that day, and so I snapped back at
him and I don't remember exactly what I said. Oh
he was using an analogy.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (39:10):
I remember this because someone texted me like, bro, you
killed him. I'm like, that wasn't me.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
It was an analogy.
Speaker 8 (39:17):
He was like, rfk uh rfk is like the ugly
girl at the prom dance and and oh this was
over paint schemes.
Speaker 6 (39:26):
This is when the number was moving forward.
Speaker 8 (39:28):
Yes, and and he was like the paint scheme we
revealed was like, yeah, it's the ugly girl.
Speaker 6 (39:34):
At prom dance you don't want.
Speaker 8 (39:35):
To dance with. And the at the time it was there,
it was RPM.
Speaker 6 (39:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
Is RPM had posted their forty three scheme and he's like,
in the forty three scheme, is you know the the
prom queen? And I responded back, in this analogy, you
must be the kid who can't get either girl.
Speaker 7 (39:53):
And that was most sad.
Speaker 5 (39:57):
I don't remember that that is savage.
Speaker 8 (39:59):
Yeah, I've actually tried to suppress that until now because
I was a little worried. I was I was gonna
get fired for that one.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
And you still stand on your two feet, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (40:12):
A little worried. Who's gonna listen to this now?
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Yeah, So I'll let Elijah go last because I definitely can't.
I don't have specific examples, and part of that is
the reason why I'm the least on the main RFK
keys among these three. But I do run our team
accounts a lot, which are you know, those are the
accounts that we use for more like traditional race updates.
They're more weekend based. We really don't put a whole
(40:37):
lot on those during the week But for the most part,
I'm running them, you know, I would say seventy five
eighty percent of the time. And at some point, like
I don't know, the last three, four or five years,
I'm like, all right, this is just how many times
can you say, laugh eighty we pitted for four tires,
So I'm like, you know, what, screw it. Just like
the same thing we've been talking about, you got to
keep pushing the needle. So I've gotten salty on those.
(40:59):
I've gotten two soft a handful of times. But it's
it's kind of fun. It's like my favorite thing because
you know, something could happen, Like I wasn't at the Rovo,
but if I was, I would have posted from the
six six account. Well we got dumped by the seventy
seven again, like for the third time, I would I
would not have taken the you know, towing the line
approach that Alatta did.
Speaker 5 (41:17):
That's just what I would have done. And you know,
every now and then.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
If it's if it's the right uh saltiness, you'll get
some decent engagement fro an account with way less followers.
So it's kind of fun, honestly, and you know, you
can't do it too many times because then you really
get your handslap.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
But at any rate, that that's my most enjoyable moments.
Speaker 8 (41:34):
What was that YouTube account that we had that feud
with last year?
Speaker 7 (41:39):
Oh my gosh, yeah, I can't think of his name.
Rf Yeah, oh yeah, this guy's got okay. So nrf
was his YouTube account that would make consistently bad takes
all the time, and they ended up saying something about,
you know, RFK is just not that good and this
(42:02):
and that and we're just starting out and we ended
up roasting them like really bad on Twitter, and oh
he said something Okay, So we ran we did a
deal and we had a sponsor Valot Defense and then
Fast and All, and we ran the same paint scheme
on both cars for at least Volet Defense, but for
Fast and All they kind of inverted them basically had
(42:23):
it was like look like F one. So this guy
was like, oh my gosh, like why would you run
the same pain schemer, same sponsor on two cars in
the same race. That makes makes no sense financially or
from a business standpoint, like you're just losing money. And
we were just like, dude, like this, who are you,
like the CEO of this company making this decision? Like
(42:43):
that's double the exposure in a race for them at
the end of the day. So we ended up trolling
them and it caught on to where like a bunch
of teams and different accounts kept saying like this isn't
F one and they'd have like two cars or two
things or the exact same and it'd be all ins
is a NASCAR and stuff. So that went on for
like six to eight maybe if you tweeted, but this
(43:03):
is an F one now someone would still catch on
to it, which was funny.
Speaker 8 (43:08):
And there was the part two to that because later
later I think it was the his his update for
the twenty twenty three season, so this was in twenty
twenty two, twenty three. He was like, RFK has like
specifically called out the social accounts on r f K
and we're like, okay, like we we gotta you know,
gotta tat back and yeah, I don't. I don't remember
(43:29):
exactly what we said, but I.
Speaker 7 (43:32):
Forget, I gotta be apologized to listen to go ahead.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
It was the it was the top gear beam.
Speaker 7 (43:36):
It was oh yeah yeah, so it was uh we
we anyway, yeah, we clipped the part uh where he's
he was like, yeah, RFK Twitter is just terrible, and
we coat tweeted it and said, uh uh it was.
It was a video Jimmy Clarkson where he's well anyway,
he's like, oh nrf was like here again, Oh well, anyway,
(43:57):
I'm gonna apologize though, because I I I think spending
the most time in the account, Like I forget, honestly
half the stuff we put out. If I'm gonna be honest,
I could recall some campaigns that were my favorite, But
like tweets in general, sometimes you have those ones that
really just come together where you're like you're waiting for
that moment, Like you have that wind graphic, you have
that copy, you have everything that's perfect, kind of like
(44:20):
the Darlington throwback thing. We had everything perfect and it
actually worked.
Speaker 6 (44:24):
That's a lot.
Speaker 7 (44:25):
That's the thing I think all of people don't see
is like we have so much stuff prepared half the
time that we don't get to use because it's just
in the scenario that we won, or that we've or
with something that happened during the race, and we're like
next time.
Speaker 8 (44:38):
Yeah, that's the funny thing. So Alijah has made what
this will be number thirty five this weekend.
Speaker 7 (44:44):
Well, you have two win graphics, two Pole Graphics, two
Stage graphics every weekend, every.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
Weekend, and only two of them have gotten used. Wind graphics.
Speaker 7 (44:51):
Yeah, obviously a lot. Almost every team does that.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
But yeah, yeah, Elijah also has his meme folder and
his phone.
Speaker 5 (45:00):
Don't forget that behind the curtain.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
Yeah you both do, right, Like so talking about the
tools in your toolbox, you know, these guys pull that
out at any point and I'm like, I.
Speaker 5 (45:09):
Even sit there and I'm like, where where do we
get this stuff from? And then I call it on.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
Eventually I'm like, oh, I see what's happened here. So
you always got to stay ready.
Speaker 7 (45:16):
There's one I'll say that when Brad still hadn't won
his first ration with RFK, he had asked me if
we could make a meme of his face on this
the gift where the Undertaker pops back up from the
dead and then I forget who he was facing, but
the dudes just like all shot, like how was he alive?
He's like, can you put my face on there? Like
(45:37):
when I finally win, like I know it's going to happen,
and I'm like, all right. So we did that, and
then we put like the other thirty nine drivers and
the guy who is all scared because Brad's back, and
that stayed in the meme folder for longer than I
think we both would have liked it too, but it
finally popped out after Darlington, along with the Larry macmeme.
You're like, man, two and a half years, like, you
just keep building your meme folder up. It's it's that's
(46:00):
the most fun part when it comes together and you're like,
it's like a perfect day, like people in social media
like wish they had this opportunity, and we get it
today and then next week probably what happened, but today's cool.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Just like any other part of a race team, you
have to be prepared for the moment when it comes.
Speaker 7 (46:16):
Absolutely got it.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
All right, gentlemen, I'm gonna let you go. I greatly
enjoyed this conversation and I said it earlier, but thank
you so much for sticking with me. I know we
rescheduled a couple of times, but I'm really glad we
got to do this, and UH count me in as
a fan. I love the way that you guys have
done the accounts. I love to see what's gonna come next,
so I appreciate the time and keep having fun with it.
Speaker 7 (46:38):
Yes, thank you, Thank you, Kelly, thanks for spotlighting.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Us once again. Thank you Brandon, Thomas and Elijah for
coming on the show. Another member of the group is
Kevin Woods, as you heard them mentioned, and I wish
Kevin could have joined us for the conversation, but your
three compadres held down the fort and we had a time.
I also want to thank Steve Newmark, who I approached
(47:02):
originally with this idea, and he was all for it
and really loved the fact that his team could be
highlighted and talked about how much they put into doing
this and delivering content. So thank you everyone in RFK
Racing for your time and coming on the podcast. If
you enjoyed the episodes, please leave a rating and review.
Go to social media and interact with me there. I
am all over the place, and the easiest way to
(47:24):
find me is go into the show description of this episode.
There is a link to link tree and that will
show you all of my social media handles. So wherever
you are most comfortable and interact the most, you will
likely find me there. And I love hearing your feedback
about the podcast. Next week, we are going to wrap
up the season with one more episode. We're going to
visit and sit down with Carson Hosovar. He is the
(47:46):
twenty twenty four NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year.
Carson and I sat down recently to dig into his
season and everything that went into winning an award and
how much it means to him. That will be next
week as we wrap up this season. Another You're down
of the Racing writers podcast
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