{"id":22521,"date":"2025-08-04T18:04:56","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T18:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22521"},"modified":"2025-08-04T18:04:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T18:04:58","slug":"waterboy-doesnt-regret-that-brand-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22521","title":{"rendered":"Waterboy doesn\u2019t regret that brand trip"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">Creator Madi Marotta\u2019s first official day on the job as Waterboy\u2019s new social media manager was a tropical and eventful one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">The electrolyte additive company was off on its second-ever brand trip, this year to Tulum, Mexico, with some big-name influencers, their plus-ones, and regular-schmegular customers all in tow. With 38 people representing the brand in some capacity, they were there mostly to party and hang out, and Marotta was there to capture it all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">She created dozens of social videos for TikTok, many taking a casual, creator-as-brand-voice approach and showing Waterboy\u2019s guests indulging in the party scene. But the TikTok audience was unimpressed with the content she gathered, and she took on what some would consider a rather unfortunate title: worst social media manager ever.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">Waterboy\u2019s co-founder and CEO, Mike Xhaxho, wasn\u2019t fazed by the criticism. In fact, his TikTok bio recently described him as a \u201cMadi stan,\u201d and the online backlash has inspired the brand\u2019s latest TikTok series featuring Marotta trying to figure out how to be a \u201cgood\u201d social media manager, humorously leaning into the critique. While he told us that the brand trip\u2019s social content wasn\u2019t designed to spark outrage, the team tried to make the most of it, and it fit into the brand\u2019s untraditional approach to marketing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">\u201cIt\u2019s just who we are, which is a little bit polarizing, for better or worse,\u201d Xhaxho said.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 dNbKdQ\">Customer love?<\/h2>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">For Waterboy\u2019s inaugural brand trip last year, it focused on inviting customers as a way to appreciate their supporters and in response to online sentiment that seemed to shift away from over-the-top influencer trips, Xhaxho said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">This year, Xhaxho said the strategy was to \u201cdouble dip\u201d by inviting customers and influencers like Kelsey Anderson, Brandon Edelman (better known as Bran Flakezz), and Ken Eurich, in addition to guests of influencers who were followers chosen via sweepstakes hosted on the influencers\u2019 accounts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">\u201cThat\u2019s still the thesis, that we\u2019re doing a customer trip,\u201d Xhaxho said. \u201cBut how cool would it maybe be for the customers to be able to party and hang out alongside their favorite creators?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">Some TikTok viewers picked up on this thesis, but several were displeased with its execution online, calling out the brand for seeming to only show the influencers and not customers or followers in its videos. Xhaxho said this was intentionally in response to feedback the brand received on last year\u2019s brand trip, where some viewers said the customers shown in last year\u2019s videos seemed like they were being forced to create ads.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">\u201cIt feels like on social right now, everything\u2019s kind of under that magnifying glass,\u201d Xhaxho said. \u201cAnd maybe certain customers view these trips as lavish and wasteful, but for us, it still helps achieve reach and awareness cost effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 dNbKdQ\">Show me the goods<\/h2>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">During the trip, Marotta helmed 42 TikToks posted to the Waterboy account. Of those, Marketing Brew counted 10 videos that featured mentions of the product or showed it on screen. Still, one of the chief critiques from TikTok commenters was that the product wasn\u2019t shown enough, or positioned as a hangover cure for the partyers on screen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">Xhaxho said that Waterboy doesn\u2019t go into its brand trips with \u201celaborate plans around exactly the content we want to capture.\u201d Rather, the team approaches the trips with high-level goals like driving awareness. As for marketing it as a hangover cure, he said that\u2019s never been part of the brand\u2019s messaging.<\/p>\n<div class=\"style__InlineSubscribeWrapper-sc-9b30af34-1 xBGLJ inline-subscribe\">\n<div id=\"inline-subscribe\" class=\"style__RoundedContainer-sc-bac6188c-0 jnRTsW\">\n<h5 class=\"inline-subscribe\">Get marketing news you&#8217;ll actually want to read<\/h5>\n<p class=\"inline-subscribe\">Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">\u201cWe don\u2019t want to communicate that, \u2018Hey, we have this weekend recovery product that you can go out and get smashed, take this, and wake up feeling fine,\u2019 because that\u2019s not what it does, and we\u2019re fine showcasing content in which it\u2019s not that,\u201d he said. \u201cI know one element of the controversy [online] was, \u2018If they took Waterboy, why are they hungover?\u2019 It\u2019s like, well, Waterboy is not this perfect hangover preventer. We would not be charging you $2 a stick if we somehow had the cure for hangovers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">Overall, viewers were also unsatisfied with the brand\u2019s production level, commenting on details like camera quality and Marotta\u2019s content style, with one person writing \u201cnothing about this page screams professional or very put together\u201d and suggesting the content was more suited to a personal account. But to Xhaxho, Marotta\u2019s style was a key part of why he hired her, as he felt it aligned with the brand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">\u201cHer content style is very much like talking to the camera, vlogging, high energy, so we felt like that would be someone that would be able to document the trip,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea of the content on the trip was, \u2018How do we make someone feel like they\u2019re there?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 dNbKdQ\">Standing out<\/h2>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">Despite the criticism, Xhaxho told us that during and immediately following the trip, the company saw its best month of sales across its website, Amazon, and retail in the company\u2019s history, though he declined to share specific sales numbers. Now, it\u2019s all about continuing the moment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">\u201cWe found ourselves in this interesting echo chamber of \u2018You\u2019re so bad at marketing,\u2019 and then we made the most of that moment,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s like, how do we continue to grow the brand and create more of our own earned moments?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">As the Waterboy TikTok account doubles down, Xhaxho said he doesn\u2019t regret the way the Tulum trip played out. Ultimately, if some consumers associate Waterboy with \u201cbad\u201d marketing, Xhaxho said there are worse things for a brand to be associated with, like poor customer relations or having an undesirable product, and he sees Marotta\u2019s content approach as a way to stand out while remaining true to the brand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-1ef9199a-8 zNSXu\">\u201cWe don\u2019t need everyone to love us because unfortunately, in trying to do so, I think what will end up happening is everyone will just feel very lukewarm at best,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s okay if we can have 10% of people love us and 90% of people hate us. That\u2019s better than everyone else feeling pretty indifferent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketingbrew.com\/stories\/2025\/07\/30\/waterboy-doesn-t-regret-that-brand-trip?utm_source=&#038;utm_medium=syndication&#038;utm_campaign=feed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Creator Madi Marotta\u2019s first official day on the job as Waterboy\u2019s new social media manager was a tropical and eventful one. The electrolyte additive company was off on its second-ever brand trip, this year to Tulum, Mexico, with some big-name influencers, their plus-ones, and regular-schmegular customers all in tow. With 38 people representing the brand [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Waterboy doesn\u2019t regret that brand trip | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Creator Madi Marotta\u2019s first official day on the job as Waterboy\u2019s new social media manager was a tropical and eventful one.The electrolyte additive\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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