Digital Campfire Download Episode 18: Dec 10, 2020: Pinterest joined the Download for the season finale, which featured creator Courtney Quinn, the founder of growing creative empire Color Me Courtney, alongside Colleen Stauffer, Pinterest's Head of Global Creator Marketing. We dove into the ways in which Pinterest--which has spiked in popularity during the pandemic (it crossed the 400-million monthly active user mark this summer)--is attracting Gen Z and millennial eyeballs by offering a safe, relaxing and legit enjoyable alternative to the toxicity of other platforms. Our conversation touched on everything from how Pinterest is building and shaping its own platform in response to its community, to how Courtney and other creators are finding a home on Pinterest, and the tactics they're using to amass their own communities there. Stay tuned for the recording and key take-aways from the episode.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 17: November 12, 2020: Shavone Charles from VSCO joined the Download. We dove into the evolution of the nearly 10-year-old platform from its original incarnation as a utilitarian tool to the hotbed of self-expression it is today, and went deep on why digital campfire platforms that foster creativity and legit community are thriving right now, especially for Gen Z audiences. Check out the recording here and top take-aways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 16: October 29th, 2020: Will Cady, Head of Creative Strategy at Reddit joinedthe Download to dive into how the 15-year-old digital campfire behemoth is evolving, tactics for spotting major cultural trends bubbling up in one of Reddit's 130k+ communities, and how brands can authentically engage with and elevate the conversations people are already having about them there. Check out the recording here and top take-aways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 15: October 15th, 2020: Allison Leahy, Head of Social Care & Community at Spotify and Oscar Osornio, a member of the Rock Stars program (the brand's extended community of Spotify obsessives), joined the Download for a conversation about finding the die-hards within a brand audience and building "sticky" communities designed to help them feel valued (and bring other super-fans into the fold). Check out the recording here and the top take-aways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 14 (Thursday, Sept. 17th, 2020):Alice Ophelia and Faye Maidment, the whip-smart duo behind the High Tea newsletter, a must-read weekly roundup of Gen Z culture, media, and tech trends from across the globe, joined to discuss the digital campfires preoccupying Gen Z audiences. Check out the recording here and the top take-aways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 13 (Thursday, Sept. 3rd, 2020): Koreen Odiney, the founder and CEO of We're Not Really Strangers, joined the Download to discuss the card game which has exploded into a global movement by facilitating intimate connections and conversations through a simple and seemingly straightforward series of questions. Hear about Koreen's strategy of "scaling slowly," the secret to building community she learned from her years developing the game, and the genius tactics that have fueled her highly-engaged Instagram following, currently 2.1 million strong. Check out the recording here and the top take-aways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 11 (Thursday, August 20th, 2020): Amanda Hesser, co-founder of media juggernaut Food52, went deep on how the food brand grew from a startup to a multi-platform media empire that now draws 24-million people across multiple channels--and how building a genuine passion community has been at the heart of its strategy since Day 1. Check out the recording here and the top take-aways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 11 (Thursday, August 6th, 2020): Nadia Eghbal and Packy McCormick joined this installment of The Digital Campfire Download to go deep on the technological and cultural factors currently reshuffling the dynamics of online creative communities and driving the rise of digital campfire platforms such as Substack across the Web. Nadia oversees writer experience at fast-growing newsletter platform Substack and is the author of the new book Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software (Stripe Press), which examines the evolution of open-source software development across the Web, in particular on platforms like GitHub. Packy is the founder of the Not Boring Club and the Not Boring newsletter, an incisive and always entertaining semi-weekly report on the intersection of business trends and culture that has ballooned to 8000+ subscribers in a short time via several crazy-smart growth strategies. Check out the recording here and the top take-aways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 10 (Thursday, July 23rd, 2020): Downloadguest Greg Isenberg is an entrepreneur who has built and advised an impressive number of community-first businesses. The last two companies he founded, Islands (a chat app for college kids) and 5by (a video discovery app) were acquired by WeWork and StumbleUpon, respectively. These days, he is co-founder of Late Checkout, a product studio that designs, creates and acquires internet communities (it was behind this recent viral phenomenon) and also advises powerhouses like TikTok on community growth strategies. Greg—a mastermind at sniffing out robust passion communities and building businesses around them—thinks we're in the midst of a major moment for digital campfires sparked by the "unbundling of Reddit." Check out the recording here and the top 5 takeaways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 009 (Thursday, July 9th, 2020): Casper ter Kuile joined the Download to discuss his latest book, “The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices,” which explores how we can re-imagine tradition and ritual for a modern context. In this book, as well as “How We Gather” and “Care of Souls”—two earlier texts he co-wrote that investigate the seismic changes transforming how we seek spirituality and meaning in our lives today—Casper examines what the future of community looks like, both on and offline. Check out the recording here and the top 5 takeaways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 008 (Thursday, June 18, 2020): Community-building expert Bailey Richardson from People & Company and Lola Omolola, founder of Female IN (FIN), a Facebook group with close to 1.7M members, joined the Download to discuss the role of leaders in building and maintaining digital campfires. There are tons of great take-aways here, whether you're a person, a non-profit organization, or a brand. Check out the recording here and the top 5 takeaways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 007 (Thursday, June 11, 2020): Aaron Levant, the CEO of NTWRK—which has been dubbed “the QVC of the YouTube generation”—joined the Download. Aaron (who also happens to be the founder of iconic streetwear show ComplexCon) went deep on how the streaming platform is brilliantly cultivating vertical-specific fan communities via live drops of exclusive, limited-edition products in collaboration with pop culture luminaries like Billie Eilish, DJ Khaled, and Wu-Tang Clan, among others. Check out the recording here and the top 5 takeaways from the episode here.
Digital Campfire Download Episode 006 (Thursday, May 28, 2020): Reina Pomeroy, Head of Community for Modern Fertility--the company behind the groundbreaking direct-to-consumer hormone test--went deep on how it is putting community at the heart of its brand strategy, and discussed why community is increasingly becoming an integral ingredient in the overall success of the company. Check out the recording here and the top 5 takeaways from the episode here.
Download 005 (May 22, 2020):Doree Shafrir and Kate Spencer, co-hosts of Forever35, the two-year-old podcast focused on all things self-care, joined the Download to discuss how the wildly popular show has exploded into a white-hot campfire thanks to a constellation of fan-run Forever35 Facebook groups (there are 104 and counting) where listeners discuss everything from dating to Disney to divorce and way beyond. Doree and Kate shared how exactly they're building the Forever35 campfire, how they've continued to evolve it through the coronavirus crisis (including launching a quarantine spinoff, Here For You) and how a strong community may just be the best defense against the reported dips in overall podcast listenership many other podcasts are seeing as a result of stay-at-home orders. Check out the recording here and the top 5 take-aways from the episode here.
Download 004 (May 7th, 2020): Naj Austin, Founder and CEO of Ethel's Club, the NY-based membership club designed for people of color to thrive, joined the Download to disccuss how she pivoted her IRL community entirely to a virtual one without so much as a hiccup when Covid-19 hit. Check out the recording here and a recap of the top 5 take-aways from the episode here.
Download 003 (April 30th, 2020): L.A.-based streetwear company Chinatown Market is setting the gold standard for social commerce and brand-led community building, leveraging Instagram to put its followers at the forefront of an ongoing creative conversation. President Dan Altmann joined The Download to discuss how he and his team do it (rule number one: have community baked into your DNA). Plus: Instagram shopping product lead Layla Amjadi joined at the top of the episode to talk about how the platform is innovating across the shopping landscape, with community-building at the core of its strategy. Check out the recording here and a recap of the top 5 take-aways from the episode here.
Download 002 (April 23rd, 2020): Guest Molly DeWolf Swenson joined the Download to discuss her work with Community.com, the new text messaging platform that enables artists, athletes, activists and brands to communicate directly with fans via text at scale, minus the algorithms (TL;DR: it's the reason you've been seeing celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Amy Schumer, Kerry Washington, Ellen and hundreds of others sharing their phone numbers via their Instagram bios). Check out the recording here.
Download 001 (April 16th, 2020): Sara spoke to Jesse Margolis (Founder) & Bridget Berman (Head of Brand Partnerships) from Overheard, the four-year-old media brand that has amassed millions of followers over multiple accounts (among them: @OverheardLA and @OverheardNewYork) by brilliantly satirizing the quirks of local people and places. Find out how they built this digital campfire—among the most highly-engaged accounts on Instagram—and keep it burning bright. Check out the recording here.
