How to Move at the Speed of Culture with Katelyn Stokes, Marketing Director at Maruchan

And could you talk me through, like- Where, like, the name Saucy Noods came from, and how did you, like, come up with that and make sure...

And I know it had, like, a huge growth on TikTok, but how did that, the name and that development come up for that?

Yeah, so that came to be by, um, we call this, like, cohort.

Well, there's a cohort of our younger audience that is all about experimentation, bold flavors, very much so inspired by social and ser-sharing on social.

So again, listening to them and seeing what was trending and relevant to them, which was these more bold, adventurous flavors, a new type of format in terms of a broth-less noodle, so very saucy, spice being important as well.

So the spice was the original launch of Saucy Noods.

Since then, we've had some different flavors that aren't only spicy, but they're all on-trend flavors.

So Saucy Noods was really born from, again, listening to that group on social and what they were looking for and designing a product for them, and then the name itself kind of having a, a tongue-in-cheek and being catchy name as well, and a vernacular that we were seeing on social in terms of how people talk about noodles.

I'm super interested 'cause, uh, just so people th-who are doing social listening or aren't doing it very well, like, what does that process look like? Um, or how often are you doing it? Like, who owns that function? Like, what does that, what does that social listening to, to-- 'Cause that's a-- This seems like it's-- You made a lot of decisions off of social listening, which is amazing because that's where culture and things are happening.

But I, I'm interested in the, like, what does that look like internally?

Yeah.

Internally, for the past two years, we focused on really building up our social team, so we are able to respond quickly to trends, but then also be thoughtful about how we respond to trends.

Because if you're, especially from a product development standpoint, right, um, and if you're responding to everything, you don't stand for anything.

So we have different tools that we use, and then a team that is chronically online using those tools, and that's their job every day, right? Is not only to post, but to be social on social, and then help inform what's going to be our next product that'll resonate with our fans, especially those that are, again, kind of experimenting, looking for those bold flavors, and, uh, very much so inspired by social.