Are You Still Writing for Humans?

Matthew Scales (00:02) the Maryland State Fair, came to us at Maryland Department of Agriculture and said, hey, we want to put this amateur blue catfish eating competition together. We have Maryland Lottery that's willing to put up a prize money of $2,000. Let's put this together. I'm like, sounds great, but let's take another step, another higher level. Why don't we go with Major League Eating, have them get some of the competitive eaters, Ben Ard (00:54) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Matthew. Matthew, welcome to the show. Matthew Scales (00:59) Hey, thanks, Pat, for having me. Ben Ard (01:00) You bet. Matthew, I'm excited. Today is going to be the ultimate story time. am engaged in this story. I love it. I think it's a perfect example of content marketing, but before we dive into that, Matthew, tell us about yourself. Let us get to know you for a minute. Tell us about your work history, background, all that fun stuff. So the audience gets to know you. Matthew Scales (01:20) Yeah, thanks Ben. And again, thanks for having me on. Yeah, so I'm a graduate of Towson University, got my Bachelor of Science in Public Relations and Advertise, and then I didn't get enough school, so I went back for my master's, got my Bachelor of Science in Communication Management. In my career, I was in a mix of working at the port, being a public information officer, and then also flipping to the marketing department and doing marketing for the cargo side along with cruises. And then I went in the tourism sector, doing marketing and public relations for the Maranoff and Tourism and then for a local destination marketing organization as well, which I really love. You tourism, think, is still in my blood. But then I switched over to Department of Agriculture where I'm the seafood marketing director now. And I still touch a little bit of tourism. You know, there's agro tourism. But right now, you know, my job is to market Maryland seafood. ⁓ all across the state. And if I'm not busy enough and I have three kids and a wife, I also started my own communications marketing business on the side where I market and do the PR for a haunted attraction. Ben Ard (02:28) I love it. That's amazing. Okay, Matthew, today's story, your experience, and I think this is such a cool example of content marketing. You had a problem that you were trying to solve and it sounds like you kind of turned to content marketing to fix it. What was the problem that you were noticing? Matthew Scales (02:32) Thank you. Yeah, then so Maryland and Virginia, we have this invasive species called the blue catfish. So when it's not your typical catfish where it's a, you know, this channel catfish, it's a bottom feeder. A blue catfish was introduced in the James River in the 1970s as a trophy fish. And so here we are decades later, it's eating crabs, it's eating rockfish, it's eating everything in its path that we know and love in the Chesapeake Bay, which is the largest estuary in the United States. So, and it's 70 % of the biomass in the Chesapeake Bay that the blue catfish creates. So as the state of Maryland, you know, we have to address it. It's my job to say, yeah, we got to get more people to eat this. And how do we do that? Right. And I think it has such a great story to it as well. We're telling this story. We're pointing out to trade shows. We're doing in-market product samplings, but we're also thinking of outside-of-the-box type of events as well to get people to this because when, especially in the mid-Atlantic region, people think catfish, they think muddy bottom feeding. So it's really trying to get over that mindset that this is a good tasting fish. It's healthy for you. has omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, potassium, and it's also very similar to straight bats. And we've done some focus groups in partnership with Department of Natural Resources about what people think of the fish and people want to know it tastes good and also that there are health benefits as well. So really, you know, telling that holistic story and, you know, the more we eat out of the Bay, the better for us. And so, like I said, we've been doing a lot of different initiatives, but we did one recently where, you know, we wanted to think outside the box. to generate some great content that we could use for social media, we could use for blogs, we could use for B-roll for sending out to news stations afterwards on our website. So everyone I think is familiar with Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Competition, which Major League Eating organizes. So we contracted with Major League Eating in partnership with the Maryland Sports Commission to do Battle of the Bay, Blue Catfish Chowdown. That was the title of it. It was September 5th, so just a short time ago. And we had all these, I think we have like eight competitive eaters come into Maryland at the Maryland State Fair where they were lined up and they were just chowing down on blue catfish to eat the most blue catfish. it just was, if you've never been to an eating competition before, I definitely recommend. Ben Ard (05:17) I love it. Okay. So let's go through this story. Where did the idea come from? Like, obviously you have, and I think this is something marketers need to follow this process. So breaking it down into its pieces, there's a problem. And for you, like, it was a very specific problem. A lot of the people listening, their problem is I need more leads or we need more brand awareness or something like that. But for you, it's like, how do we limit the population of an invasive species? And like that is such a cool challenge that almost nobody's going to have the opportunity to market. And so you have this problem. You did all sorts of cool stuff. You're educating people on the taste. You're doing focus groups, figuring out the health benefits. And then you go into this eating competition, like what, what, was that brainstorming session? What did that look like? Where did the idea come from? Matthew Scales (06:07) I it was a little bit of, I mean, I like, you know, my thought process and my marketing. Yeah, I'm a little bit traditional, but I also like to think out of the norm, right? There's so much noise out there. There's so much content that we consume through social media, websites. It's very overwhelming. I don't know about for you, but for me it is, right? So how do I cut through there? I always talk about that with the team. so, and thinking about different ideas, the Maryland State Fair, came to us at Maryland Department of Agriculture and said, hey, we want to put this amateur blue catfish eating competition together. We have Maryland Lottery that's willing to put up a prize money of $2,000. Let's put this together. I'm like, sounds great, but let's take another step, another higher level. Why don't we go with Major League Eating, have them get some of the competitive eaters, which First of all, too, some of them, I don't know if you've watched any of those competitions, Ben, but some of those competitors from James Webb to Crazy Legs, they have some cool names too. They have some great social media presence. And when they're coming here, they are putting their tripods up and they're putting their phone on to record the whole thing. So that way their viewers are able to tune into that, their streaming and that content to watch from him as well. Ben Ard (07:12) Mm-hmm. Matthew Scales (07:24) So we contracted with them. We got Maryland Sports Commission on board. We got another sponsor as well, Maryland Tourism Coalition, because there is a tourism angle in there. And then, yeah, from there we got the fish from Tillman Island Seafood. We got it breaded. Got it delivered to the Maryland State Fair. And ⁓ I also got branded t-shirts from Route 1 Apparel, which Route 1 does all these Maryland themed, you know. And in Maryland, we love our flag, so. there, Robb Winn Apparel does a lot of Maryland flag apparel and they did a battle of the day blue catfish shirt, I should have wore it today, sorry, for this with the sponsors on the back. So we had a big banner with our sponsors, the name of it and some sandwich boards and ⁓ yeah, that's how the idea was. Ben Ard (07:51) Okay. you're good. This is great. I have to ask how much did the winner eat? Like that's a big part of this. Like any clue? Matthew Scales (08:17) ⁓ yes, now you're putting me on the spot. I, let's see. so James Webb won he won with, eating 63.3 wild caught Maryland blue cat trip, blue catfish strips in 10 minutes. So 63.3 blue catfish strips. Think of like a chicken strip. Ben Ard (08:33) Wow. Matthew Scales (08:37) 63.3 of them in 10 minutes. James Webna. That's a lot of blue catfish. Ben Ard (08:40) Wow, that is incredible. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. Okay. So I love this story. So keeping going with it. One of the coolest things I've heard about brainstorming is the idea of never saying the words, but or no, but you've always go with and, and I love, this is a perfect example. Here's an opportunity. Yes. And why don't we do all of this cool extra stuff? Let's take this to the next level. That's where some of the best and greatest ideas come from. Matthew Scales (08:57) Mm-hmm. Ben Ard (09:11) It's building off of what you already have opportunities for. What, what did the distribution look like? mean, obviously these are professional leaders. Like you said, they had their tripods and their phones and social media presence. Have you been able to even come close to measuring like the amount of eyeballs that kind of got on this event and what it looked like? Matthew Scales (09:31) Yeah, so contracting with major league eating, ⁓ they have a communications firm that works with them. So we're working on getting the social media and urge media reach and impression figures. Because that's going to be important to them. We talk about next year. Do we want to do this again? Which I'm thinking. Yes. I mean, I, I want to make this kind of a tradition of Nathan's and like, you know, seek out another sponsor really wanted to. I won't plug any spice companies, but you know, there's a major spice company that like this could be you just like Nathan's is that all the baby catfish. cause you know, we can talk about partnerships too. I'm branding. Like this is something I think there's so many win-win wins across the board. And you know, another thing we were lacking too was, you know, we talked about content was content for blue catfish. have some video and some images, but. really having Maroon PR capture some B-roll that they wrote us on news stations that we can then use for next year and other purposes as well, I think it's gonna be beneficial. Ben Ard (10:33) I love that. That's amazing. So you're measuring it. You contracted with the groups. You've got partnerships. All of that goes to, you know, really great links and it's an amazing presence. And it goes to user generated content as well. I mean, obviously the best content is often the content you don't have to create. I mean, what were, what were some of the things that these influencers were saying? Like, were they recording and talking about blue catfish? Matthew Scales (10:52) That's right. Ben Ard (10:58) Did you get to like give them any stats or figures or was it purely, Hey, how about it? You know, do your thing. Matthew Scales (11:04) You know, in talking with what when they came in, yeah, I was talking with a couple of them. And, you know, I was talking about like, you know, what is your what is your method? And they're like, well, they're asking all these questions. ⁓ How hot is it going to be? What is like the consistency? Does it have bones? Which does not have bones, blue catfish, filets. You know, what is the breading made out of? Like all of this is factored in to like, I guess their approach of how they're going to eat. It was really interesting because it's like Ben Ard (11:18) Mm. Matthew Scales (11:32) You think of an athlete, right? Who's preparing for a game. They were preparing for a game at that point. They're asking all these questions because that's going to be kind of their tactic of how they're going to attack in eating. And when they were eating, you know, I was trying to get content to on my phone as well. So I wasn't paying too close attention, but in looking at some of the content I captured and what other people captured, some of them were chewing it like the strips and then kind of putting it back in their bowl and baby, baby burning it back to themselves. cause it would easier to go down as well. So some it's a little gross, but again, I think that's what, you know, we need for content. People I think like to kind of weirdly see some of this stuff rather than just, you know, your traditional marketing, me putting out a blog or a press release or just some social content saying, Hey, here's a blue catfish, you know, ⁓ go to XYZ restaurant and eat it. where it's not going to get maybe the engagement rather than your outside of the box content, like ⁓ major league eating competition. Ben Ard (12:34) I love that. That's an amazing story. One final question, because we're almost out of time and I am fascinated by this. I think this is a great example a lot of people can draw from. When you look at like the impact you're trying to make, obviously to decline a population of an invasive species, how do you measure success with content like this? I mean, is it purely eyeballs or do you have other internal metrics that you're measuring against and how do you connect that to the content? Matthew Scales (13:01) That's a great question, man. mean, right now, my metrics are, yeah, what are those social and earned media stats? Those are our kind of KPIs that we're measuring. We also have a website, Maryland's Best.net, where it has a dedicated Blue Catfish webpage. So what is the length of stay on that page and how many people are actually going on that page, maybe in a certain time frame from the competition as well? So looking at all those and seeing how that tells the story is really beneficial, but also working too with our blue catfish, which is the USDA, it's the only USDA processed fish, working with our USDA processors and seeing how much blue catfish is going out the door. Seeing if that's something too that is also correlating with that we're seeing on our side. Ben Ard (13:48) Very cool. I love that. That's so cool. All right. Well, Matthew, for anyone who's listening to this episode and thinks, okay, this is really cool and clever. I'd love to connect and further the conversation online. How and where can they best find you? Matthew Scales (14:02) Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, Matthew Scales. That's where you can find me. like I said, Maryland's Best.net has my contact info on there as well. Ben Ard (14:08) Love it. For anyone listening, we will link to Matthew's profile in the show notes below. just scroll down, click on Matthew's name and feel free to connect with them on LinkedIn. Matthew again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you telling the story. I love the creativity. I love this. This is content marketing and it's best. So I really do appreciate you sharing. Matthew Scales (14:28) Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me on. Ben Ard (14:29) Yep.