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As a data geek, the moment I saw this tweet thread it was love at first sight:
I knew instantly our new Measurement Maven of the Month would be @steak_umm, a.k.a. Nathan Allebach (@nathanallebach).
The thread, as most of Steak-umm’s do, seemed to strike a nerve in the national conscience: we needed someone to sound sane, at least on Twitter. No less than noted media critic Jeff Jarvis was impressed:
Entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder of Craigslist Craig Newmark also weighed in.
It turns out Allebach has been tapping into the national psyche for some time. But he’s also helping the company sell product and measure success. After his first round of millennial angst began in 2018, the company naturally wanted to know if it was worth paying him to continue. So, as any good data-driven marketing team might do, they ran correlations. They found out that not only was the company’s social engagement increasing, so were sales.
The most recent set of data-embracing tweets made Steak-umms the latest version of toilet paper—the target of panic purchasing. People like me, who’d long since forgotten about the product that so delighted us in our childhoods, weighed in on how much we enjoyed it way back then. And soon people were commenting that they could no longer find it in the freezer aisles of their local grocery stores. Read this article for a fascinating look at the invention and history of Steak-umms.
So thank you, @steak_umm and @nathanallebach, for bringing data and science to the forefront of popular culture. For that we name you our Measurement Mavens of the Month. Congrats! ∞
