I love chocolate candy. I have always been a foodie, and to have the opportunity to be able to connect and give a shout out to one of my favorite brands is always awesome. Over the years, I have had some incredible opportunities where brands have sent gifts, swag, and other items to me. All of these have been pretty amazing and I have always been super grateful.
Then MMs Chocolate went ahead and set a new standard.
How did this all happen? Let me start at the very beginning. Back in February, when we were all watching the Super Bowl, MMs had their commercial featuring actor Dan Levy, and there was a segment on Karen’s and women who were actually named Karen (what can I say? My name has definitely had a tough year in pop culture!). Here’s the commercial.
Of course, I was amused and I “felt seen!” and shared this via Twitter, where MMs Chocolate responded as such:
This went back and forth, and many of my friends were saying how they never really have considered me to be one of those “Karens” and my friend Fred even said MMs should send me some MMs as a result. This lead to a great conversation via Twitter DM where they asked me my address so they could send me some MMs.
To be perfectly honest, I thought – hey! They are going to send me some fun packs to share w/ my students and that would be amazing and so kind of them. A few weeks went by, and I came home to seeing this package hanging out at my front door. I was shocked. This did not look like it contained fun packs of MMs. This package was MASSIVE!
When I carried in the box (thank goodness for my work with OTF and Peloton!), I opened up and had 360 bags of MMs. This was a huge amount of MMs! I do not think I have ever had this much chocolate in my life in my house.
So, you may be asking what I did with all of this chocolate? I did a few things, but first I wanted to make sure I strategized to make sure I was providing value and extra content for MMs because of their generosity. Here is what I did:
- Create my own content to showcase MMs and their generosity. Besides this blog post, I have created tweets, Instagram stories, feed posts, Facebook updates, and even a TikTok video about this very cool experience. I wouldn’t be a social media professor if I did not practice what I preached, right?!
- Shared the joy with others at UofL. I had about 10 cases of MMs (!!!) and I realized – I got to share the joy with my friends, colleagues, and students at UofL. So, I decided to share the chocolates with my colleagues at the Department of Communication, President Benapudi and her staff at UofL, and graduate students who are busy preparing for their comprehensive exams and thesis defenses!
- Executed a class activity for content creation for MMs at UofL. I went ahead and assigned a class activity asking my social media class at UofL to work in teams to create content showcasing MMs on the UofL Campus. I gave them about 30 minutes to do this activity, but I let them decide what they were going to create. I told them that I would like them to showcase MMs on campus, and share the content across three platforms (IG, TikTok, and Twitter). I think it really went over well! Here are the videos from the students: Team One: https://lnkd.in/e3v88rn, Team Two: https://lnkd.in/e3f2CCQ, and Team Three: https://lnkd.in/evj7TwU. I saw these videos and I am so inspired by my students and their creativity! Definitely was having some #ProudProf Moments here! This activity went over so well, I think I may implement this type of exercise for future courses! What was even cooler was the fact that MMs responded to the student’s videos on TikTok – which made their day!
Overall, I was extremely impressed with the students and their creativity in taking on this challenge in doing some really innovate things with MMs on campus.
I would love to thank again MMs and the social media team for being so kind, and allowing me to be able to spread some joy and excitement with the students and my fellow colleagues and friends here at the University of Louisville.
MMs Chocolates – you have always had a fan in me, but you got a lifelong fan and supporter!
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
