Intro (00:00):

Welcome to The Taylor Ten. A fast-paced, 10 minute deep dive into the minds of those shaking up the marketing world, bringing you the sharpest insights, boldest ideas and breakthrough trends driving the industry forward. So tune in, get inspired, and stay ahead.

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Jake (00:17):

Hello, I am Jake McGrady and welcome to The Taylor Ten. I'm here with Sunny from Sunnyside up and I'm here to learn as much as I can about memes in only 10 minutes.

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Sunny (00:29):

I know a lot of companies, they have a bunch of Instagram pages and they have a bunch of people analyzing trends and doing all these things, but at the end of the day, I know I have a good gauge of what's funny. I know what people like. I can post a meme and I'll know what people are going to comment on it, what's problematic about it, what's not problematic about it, and then have people argue in it. I'm calculated in that way where I know that the content is going to do what it has to do, but you never know what people are going to know what happen. It's all luck. Anyone that tell you literally, I don't know what I'm doing, I just know if a meme is good, I'm going to post. It doesn't do. Well, delete it. So anyone who tells you they have this strategy, there's obviously algorithms and all these things, but no one knows what the fucking algorithm is. For me, I have four meme accounts and they all have a theme and they all stick to the theme.

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Sunny (01:31):

I'm different than a random generic meme page that's like, oh, relationship goals or couples goals or blah, blah, blah. A lot of advertisers, when they approach me within an email, they're like, we really love your pages. My son loves your page, and all these things. And because my pages, maybe the content isn't there, but the name of the page and the branding and the blueprint and how everything makes sense, I have a higher standard of what people are willing to pay more for my page, even though it doesn't have a lot of followers. They look at my page and half their friends are following it and they're like, oh, this person must be doing something different than this page where none of my friends are following

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Jake (02:20):

It's community. Do you have one meme or one piece of content that you created for brands or through a collaboration where they were just too, to the very bittersweet end, they were like, I just don't see how this is going to work. What do you mean I'm hesitant about this? And you're like, trust me, trust me. It's absurd, but my audience will resonate with this. And then you published it and it performed fantastic.

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Sunny (02:48):

So to that point, they never let me publish it. 

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Jake (02:51):

It never gets to that point.

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Sunny (02:52):

And then when I told them, this isn't going to work, they still made me post it.

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Jake (02:59):

Then you're like, see, I told you. Yeah. I mean, I don't even have to say it. They still pay me, and they don't complain about it. They know that they chose it, but at the same time, on the other side of that, there's been plenty of advertisers who, I guess they're not like maybe an AI generated video thing where they're just like, yeah, do whatever you want to do. Any ad that let me do what I wanted to do, it went viral, more viral than they ever thought it could. Sometimes more viral than an average post that I would post

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Sunny (03:38):

Because I'm able to use my, okay, Taco Bell, this obviously has a good name in the social, people love Taco Bell. So what I would also do is whenever I get an ad and they're paying really well, I'll hit up a friend who I know is really good at this, and I'll be like, Hey, I'll give you 10% of this and can we brainstorm and can we see if we can make this funny? And every time I did that, collaborating with my peers and my friends and making sure they get paid, it always worked out in the long run. If an ad and someone's paying for me, I want to make sure it's getting the most

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Jake (04:29):

ROI their value.

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Sunny (04:30):

And not only that, I can show it to another ad or another person who wants to advertise. I'll be like, oh, look, this Baha Blast meme got 10 million views on a page that has 1 million followers. So at that point, they're just seeing numbers and then they're like, yeah, let's do it.

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Jake (04:48):

Gotcha. So have you noticed that sometimes it has taken that one, I want to call 'em legacy corporation, respected large brands that have let you have more creative freedom than others have, and that specific brand post going off and performing great has really helped you pitch to other brands that might have a more reserved approach. They want to play it safer, and you're like, look, I did this for, I'll just say Taco Bell and look how it performed. It's a little bit wacky. They let me do it. Let me use this approach for you, and you'll see some of the same results. Have you experienced that?

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Sunny (05:28):

I haven't, because if a client's coming to me like that, they're usually making the content themselves

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Sunny (05:39):

The way that it works is like, yeah, I can pitch them on a content and I can keep trying, and they'll be like, no, no, no, no, no, because at the end of the day, there's some 60-year-old guy at the end of the thing approving it, so he's not going to understand it. So the way that it works is with these companies, they'll make the pre-approved content from before and they'll be like, if you want to make any tweaks, and at that point I'm like, I don't care. Just give me the post. I'll post it. If I'm not putting my 2 cents into it, they're going to be paying more for me to just

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Jake (06:13):

Distribute it. Essentially,

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Sunny (06:15):

I exist on the internet to make money, so I'm going to take most situations. I'm going to take what I can get because who knows how long this is going to last.

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Jake (06:25):

To kind of close things out, do you have anything you wanted to call out or any last statements about your journey and where you see the space going?

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Sunny (06:34):

There's nostalgia. Things come back around in two years from now. 2015 memes are going to be funny again. Ironically, just like music, just like style, everything comes back around, but with internet culture, it comes back around much faster because it's a collective consciousness of everyone remembers that part. I think without TV and MTV and all these things, there's no collective conscious of what's cool anymore, which

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Sunny (07:07):

I think is a good thing and a bad thing. It's a bad thing because people are just going crazy and they're doing all these things that they think are going to be cool, but they're really not. I think the gatekeeping of MTV was kind of good because it got everyone together in one place and to be like, oh, this is good. Oh, we should go to this concert. Oh, I like this TV show. And everyone, I remember in the early days of the internet, there were spoiler alerts. Game of Thrones just came out and everyone's talking about, oh, this, this, and this happened. I've never seen a spoiler alert in 10 years because everyone's watching different shows and it's not centralized anymore.

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Sunny (07:50):

And there's good aspects also because people on podcasts, they're just saying what they want to say without a filter from a network. So there's good and there's bad in it, but ultimately it's going to come back to people losing jobs and careers becoming obsolete. The music industry with Spotify died, and then next the movie industry with Netflix died. So you have to figure out a way where you can make money and follow your dreams of music or storytelling through video content that's going to last or at least work for the time. Now, any advice that I have for other people trying to get into this and trying to do content, whatever it is, is don't follow the algorithms. Don't follow what other people are doing because if you do that, they're doing it already. They figure out all these things. You have to figure out your own way.

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Sunny (08:49):

Just do what you genuinely think is funny. Maybe people around you are going to think you're insane. Not everyone's going to like who you are, post what you think is good, no matter what, and just keep going. Because if what you think is good and what no one else thinks is good is that's going to be unique. That's your perspective, and no one else has your perspective. I think that's the main fuck algorithms, fuck strategy, fuck all that shit. Just post what you think is good and be consistent every day and people are going to catch on and be like, oh, this person does that thing. I'm going to fuck with that.

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Jake (09:29):

Well said. Well said. Thank you very much, Sonny. Where can they find you on social media if you want to shout out where they can keep up with your content?

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Sunny (09:38):

Sonny signed up on Instagram. That's S-O-N-N-Y five I-D-E-U-P. I also have Sonny set up on Spotify, S-O-N-N-Y-S-I-D-E-U-P without the five in the middle. Basically Twitter, sunny set up, also YouTube. Sunny set up.

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Jake (09:57):

All right, thanks Sunny. This has been awesome, and thank you for hopping on The Taylor Ten.