How Harry Styles' chicken nugget moment led to content gold for Popeyes

Next in our Creative Excellence series for Hispanic Heritage Month, our Guest Editor Carmen Rodriguez of Gut passes the baton to Jose Ramirez, who works with her as associate creative director at Gut Miami. There, he helps lead the agency’s content department, working on clients including Popeyes and Visible by Verizon, among others. Prior to Gut, he was at Disney’s in-house agency Yellow Shoes, where he helped the agency win its first-ever One Show Pencil for “Pixar Street View,” a campaign that took an iconic Pixar tradition to a new medium for the very first time. He has also worked at Republica where work included “Broken Crayons,” an anti-child abuse initiative on behalf of the non-profit Amigos For Kids. "I’m really proud to have Jose be part of this," said Rodriguez. "He has been a huge piece of the heart and soul at Gut Miami, so to see him grow to be the leader he is today of our newly created Content discipline, working with clients like Popeyes and Philadelphia Cream Cheese, as well as having helped us win our first social AOR for Visible, has been incredible. I can’t wait to see what more will come from Jose and his incredibly diverse team." There have been many moments, campaigns and projects that have made me proud in my career, but if I have to highlight one, it would have to be the opportunity to help lead our newly created content department. After moving to the U.S. from Venezuela only 10 years ago, I would have never guessed when I first started my career that I’d be leading a department with huge social AORs, where we are handling their businesses day to day, as well as helping them react to culture as it happens. One of the biggest moments we had while just starting the content discipline was winning the entire social/content AOR account for Visible by Verizon. It was our first telecom brand in the U.S. where we led the creation of the brand's content across its owned channels, as well as create content and channel strategies, cultural insights, content mining, community management and more. It’s an incredible responsibility to be part of leading this business, and something I’m extremely proud to do alongside our content team. In addition to working with Visible, with Gut as Popeyes’ AOR, the content department also leads all of Popeyes’ social/content communications on its owned channels. This includes reacting to and creating moments in culture specific to the brand. A perfect example of this stems from a recent concert in NYC with a famous pop star having a chicken nugget thrown onstage while he was performing, where Harry Styles told the audience he doesn’t eat chicken. For us, it was no question that Popeyes should to respond to the incident, so that’s why, in a matter of days, we had Popeyes go to that same concert in NYC to comment on its feelings about the chicken throwing fiasco, doing it the way fans share messages with their favorite artists: signs. One of the signs said, “It’s Love That Chicken, Not Throw That Chicken,” and “You Don’t Have To Love Us, We Love You,” among others. The fans talked about it. The press covered it. And it’s one of my favorite projects I’ve ever worked on and am most proud of to date. To be part of a young but growing department at an independent and gutsy agency is something I couldn’t have even fathomed years ago, so I’m proud and honored to have this responsibility, working with our incredible team here, and reacting with content for our brands at the speed of culture.

How Harry Styles' chicken nugget moment led to content gold for Popeyes

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