Ben Viagas

Marcomm at @Hines | Previously @MorganStanley @Grayscale | Big dork

[Chris Goldammer @floor_per_area]

Shops Selling Only Rice Pudding
In NYC
2003 - 2026

[Joe Pera @JosephPera]

had to share this sale with you:

[Ben Viagas @BenViagas]

Call Me Coffee Beans The Way I'm Hot On My Grind

[jorts 🇵🇸 @ftmensch]

mail is cool because 99% of the time it’s like a J.c. penney catalogue for a previous tenant and 1% of the time it’s something you’ll go to jail for if you don’t look at

[alexandra scaggs @alexandrascaggs]

incredible hed from @BryceElder
https://t.co/KKmo4MwH7c

[Ben Viagas @BenViagas]

Why is this so funny

[Ben Viagas @BenViagas]

The first entry in the #barbenheimer cinematic universe.

[Ben Viagas @BenViagas]

@mattmaximo Likely a pattern of behavior. Document document document. Identify other people who have worked in the office and find out if they have additional evidence.

[Ben Viagas @BenViagas]

Reading all those coffee blogs finally paid off:

#Tradle #498 1/6
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
https://t.co/bRhoVGYeWq

[Jennifer Rosenthal Maimon @jenn_rosenthal]

Spilled the tea about my life story, and shared a bunch of my weird, random corporate quirks and thoughts because @BenViagas conducts a dang good interview:

[Max Tani @maxwelltani]

@semafor More exclusives from the newsletter: Here's a slide from the pitch deck for Robinhood's new media company Sherwood, which is being run by Josh Topolsky

https://t.co/UgxEJzgElU

[Ben Viagas @BenViagas]

@dylanlyons91 @MargotAtwell will love this

[Guillaume Huin @HuinGuillaume]

I have received so many questions about the Grimace Trend and how McDonald's handled it.

I shared on LinkedIn but here is an insider view from the social media team of what happened :
- if you think we planted the grimace shake trend, thank you. So much. But you think way too highly of us. This was a level of genius creativity and organic fun that I could never dream about or plan for - it was all from the fans, and the fans only, and the initial spark came from Austin Frazier. Our "only responsibility" in helping the trend happen was giving the "tools" to play with, reintroducing Grimace, the shake and going all in in letting the character take over our accounts. With a particular tone of voice, attitude, "way of typinggg" and taking badly cropped and blurry selfies.
- if you think we would never acknowledge the trend, well, I thought so too at first, so I won't blame you. Honestly, I think my very first text to the team and agencies was "not sure we should jump in". It took us a bit of time to process what was happening. The campaign was already wildly successful, both on a social and business standpoint, so why would we take the "risk" to jump in? But hours of watching, reading the comments, trying to learn and genuinely understand helped us see what this was about : brilliant creativity, unfiltered fun, peak absurdist gen z humor, just the way a new generation of creators and consumers play with brands. I've seen videos which levels of production and craft made me smile silently in admiration and wonder. I've seen fan arts that made us send dozen of emails and texts to friends and colleagues saying "omg did you see that"? We then discussed what was the right thing to do about the trend : saying nothing felt disconnected, encouraging it felt self-serving, so we just decided to show our fans that we see them and their creativity in a sweet, candid and genuine way, as grimace would. The same way you would respectfully and gently nod at someone, without repeating what they said to show you agree with them and stealing their thunder. I must also say thank you to our leadership, PR and legal teams for being open, seeking to understand and trust the teams. Was there a lot of questions, sentiment analysis tools, listening dashboards and emails? More than I can count. Was there doubt? Immense doubt. Did we still move forward and get full support up to our top leadership? Sure did.

A one of a kind campaign :
- Billions in reach, millions in engagements, millions of mentions
- Top trend at least 8 different days on twitter
- Top 3 hashtags on tiktok and trend on snapchat for multiple days
- and more importantly, so many internal teams, agencies and fans genuinely loving grimace and having fun

Thank you, Grimace. We miss youuu.

[Jennifer Rosenthal Maimon @jenn_rosenthal]

Media tech salespeople be like: "Don't want to hear from me about this game-changing solution that will absolutely transform your business ever again? Just lmk, and I'll banish myself from your inbox and your life for ever and ever :)"

[Ben Viagas @BenViagas]

@jc4p Don't be like all those people who started saying "hella" ironically then couldn't stop.

[Ben Viagas @BenViagas]

@MargotAtwell It's part of the push for Twitter Blue. Verified tweets get more reach and non-verified tweets get less than they used to.