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 am here with Bryce from Midwest vs. everybody, and we are here to learn as much as I can about regional marketing in only 10 minutes. Bryce, let's give the audience just a little bit of an introduction to Midwest vs. Everybody.

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BRYCE (00:36):

Yeah, it's actually a spinoff of the Iowa Chill Channels, which here in Iowa, it's a pretty big deal. In 2017, we started our small college business and started posting on Twitter and Snapchat and all over what was then the social media sphere. Obviously, TikTok and all that stuff came a little later and we saw a lot of people resonating with the Iowa Chill messages and decided, well, I think we can speak this same language for people in Ohio and even Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, those non-traditional Midwest spots that resonated with the content we were putting out. So, we just kind of grew from there and have been running those two brands for eight years now.

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JAKE (01:20):

Yeah, and to give just a little bit of a synopsis to people. You started with originally just memes and aggregating content, and what it's stemmed into is creating original content. And I would love to learn more about the evolution from kind of just meme posting to now the original content and how that's resonated with brands and gotten both regional and global and huge brands, frankly, to reach out and collaborate with you guys on content and all that great stuff.

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BRYCE (01:53):

Yeah, I'm almost 30 years old and in the content world, that's ancient and you're talking to me, I grew up with when Snapchat came out and when I got my Facebook account, I think the year that it was launched to the public. So, we definitely saw a lot of the evolution of everyone migrating from Facebook and Snapchat over to Instagram and Instagram at the time is only either quote cards or pictures with your family kind of thing. And then the meme world, I really feel like took off in 2014 and 15. The early days of just people posting relatable, funny stuff. And like you said, we were definitely a UGC submission style platform. And over the years, learned to talk the language of the internet is really how I like to talk about it. And as we saw those evolutions of Instagram and then TikTok in 2019 to 2020 during the pandemic and where all the attention was going, we just have naturally evolved the language that we were using in memes and some of the static content into now Reels and TikTok content for video style platforms.

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JAKE (03:07):

Absolutely. And I would love to know your opinion on the early days of social media when it was so UGC contingent and frankly, it was kind of like the wild, wild west where there weren't a lot of rules. And now especially I feel like in 2025 we're kind of starting to see the peak of copyright and basically the rules. Rules have been amplified by 30 when it comes to what you can and can't post.

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BRYCE (03:36):

If anything, in this day and age, we're looking for authenticity and one, the language we're speaking in the Midwest is very hardworking, blue collar, Midwest, nice. We're leaning into all those stereotypes, right. But in the same token, in kind of a broader worldview, I think people in general are consuming content that feels authentic and real and isn't so done up. It doesn't have a thousand filters on it. It's like, here's me and my wife, husband, whatever, jumping on the bed being ridiculous. People enjoy that stuff. And it's even more amplified now because of things like ai. There's a fast changing landscape of all of that kind of stuff too. And I think we're at the luxury of being around for so long and having built this platform with no paid reach, all of these followers and all of the engagement we're getting is organic and it's grassroots.

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(04:28):

And I think that people appreciate the fact that 95% of our Iowa show following is from Iowa, and a significant percentage of the Midwest following is from the Midwest. So touching on kind of your earlier point of people that want to work with us from a client perspective, that's what we see the value in. It's these people have grown up with us through almost 10 years of social media creation and content publishing, and they see that we speak a real language of the region. And when you're activating a product in this space, we're one of those trusted brands you can rely on.

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JAKE (05:05):

Absolutely. And I think kind of what you just said resonated with me. I remember way back in the day, I won't go too far into it, but when I started my Mr. Portland pages on Twitter and Instagram and everything back then.

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(05:18):

It was really kind of the same goal with creating a persona to target Blazers fans because I’m local here in Portland, and that led to my first really and largest collaboration with Budweiser when they did a specific trailblazers themed Budweiser can and they wanted to target Blazers fans specifically in Portland. And what I found interesting is when I was pitching concepts and ideas, and this was, I won't say the year, but some time ago, and they almost were a little bit even resistant to some Portland themed humor, and I don't want to say resistant, but it took a little bit more explaining of a concept and whatnot. And I feel like now maybe a brand is like, you know what? I don't understand it, but I'm going to trust you and if this is what's going to resonate with your audience, then that's what's most important. And I find it refreshing that it feels like in an era now we brands are taking a backseat.

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BRYCE (06:15):

I think you're totally right. I think that brands' main objective is to be very tactical about who their market is, and then as it comes to deployment and getting the reach from traditional media to somebody like ourselves who's on the social media landscape, letting those creatives take the spin. Obviously give them the briefs, give them all the major touch points, but then let them make the content and have it unfold in a way that's very authentic to their audience. But I totally understand that initial, that apprehension, I guess maybe is the good word for it. But it seems expensive or it seems like maybe too much out of your control that you get nervous of how your brain is represented. To your point, I think that they're getting more comfortable with it and they've just realized that is it more expensive than just launching a national TV campaign that's worth millions of dollars during Super Bowl weekend, or do we want to do a lot of micro budgets and potentially more work, but more bang for your buck too because you're speaking the language of the people you're trying to get to buy your product.

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JAKE (07:22):

I wanted to ask too, if there, over the many years that Midwest versus everybody has been operating, what has been the one thing that has kind of surprised you the most about the social media landscape?

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BRYCE (07:34):

There's such a strong affinity for the things that we felt like we grew up with and the culture that we know and look outside and see, and just that relatability and obviously accumulating that, following through that. The downside of that, this point is that the for you page has kind of made the following a little bit irrelevant, right? There's less emphasis on your total follower count and more on how quickly can you produce the next viral piece of content? So, it's definitely a changing landscape, but it's something that we are competitive with ourselves every single day to make people laugh, have nostalgia, and feel something, right. So it's something that we were already ready and poised to do as things change, but it's just not chronological anymore. You have to always be top of mind and the most relevant and content matters - songs, sounds.

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(08:25):

You got to be a daily practitioner of the apps, otherwise you're going to kind of lose your relevance. When we're having those conversations with brand partners, the following is truthfully, not as important. And I don't know if we've ever really emphasized the fact that, hey, look at how many followers we have, because it's always about how much reach that the post that you're branded on gets when we publish. So it really is that benchmark of, obviously we're doing something right consistently year over year and the follower growth reflects that, but we're so much more interested in the day-to-day post metrics and that's the stuff that matters to a client. But I love it. I love being able to dive in every single day. There's a new challenge, a new something to pay attention to, and we've brought on a couple of young team members, gen Z, there's a whole different language with those guys. So it's been fun to see the evolution of the way that they think about content creation.

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JAKE (09:24):

Awesome. Well that is about our time here and thank you very much, Bryce.

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BRYCE (09:28):

Yeah, thanks for having me, Jake. If you're a small to Fortune 500 company looking to activate in the Midwest, but always open to having that conversation.

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JAKE (09:38):

Absolutely. Alright, thank you to everyone listening. This is The Taylor Ten.

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