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The Pulse | Episode 1
David: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. I am David and you are listening to The Pulse influencer marketing podcast, where we pick the brains of the top influencer marketing experts to get actionable advice you can use in your business. If you're sick of high level fluffy influencer marketing strategies, you are at the right place.
This show is brought to you by inBeat, an influencer discovery platform to help you find the best influencers on TikTok and Instagram. You can try it for free by heading over to inbeat.co.
We have Andrew today with us. Andrew has a weird unbiased position in the influencer marketing space. He's been working with creators. He's been working with agencies. And he's been working in consulting. I mean, he's all over the place. He knows a lot more about the space than any other person that I know of. Thanks for being on the show Andrew.
Andrew: [00:00:48] Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
David: [00:00:53] Awesome. All right. So let me ask you my first question, actually, can you tell the audience a little more about your background, how you got into influencer marketing and where you're at now.
Andrew: [00:01:01] Yeah. Um, I was working actually in an influencer marketing agency. Um, I was in pricing and analytics, so I would literally build Google sheet models of influencers campaigns and figure out, campaign per campaign, what is our budget? What are the influencers charging? What are we trying? What are our goals? How do they match up and how do we put it all together and make a profit and have a business?
Um, it's a small agency inside of like a TV network called Queue. Um, I was working there for a few years and then I knew like my personal goals in life were to branch out and get more knowledge of the industry as a whole.
I thought influence marketing was an amazing amalgamation of everything I've done in my life of being a creator and a filmmaker. Everything has sort of pulled all of the best stuff of what I thought was really cool. And I thought the future of influencer marketing is only bright. Um, and at the time I was working in this agency, I just wanted to know, you know, what else is out there?
What are some other case studies? And I literally couldn't find a, um, example. Like I couldn't, I had to find basically 70 different sources of information, um, realized like there is no single source for the best data informed, awesome information. And so I made it, uh, Influence Weekly is a curated newsletter every single week that curates everything I find around the web that's insightful and data informed. And generally positive for the industry.
I don't include anything. That's that's a downing any individual person, because I think this, this industry gets shitted on because we're so close to influencers, but influencers and influencer marketing are vastly different. Yeah. So I cut out a lot of the negative things, um, and only share the net positive.Influence Weekly
So sometimes there will be like a negative sounding article, but there's some great lessons learned, but on the whole I'm sharing great case studies, uh, quantitative and qualitative information interviews with really cool people around the industry. Um, and yeah, and I've been doing this newsletter now for like three, almost three years.
David: [00:03:18] Definitely forgot to mention that, but, uh, Influence Weekly is an awesome newsletter. I think you're, you're probably the best curator in the space. Uh, the content that's, there is very unique and not as repetitive as what we can find when we do Google searches to say the least.
Andrew: [00:03:40] Just about the Google searches. It ends up being that I started the newsletter by doing Google searches, but I just did like super specific and Google searches for things that I really wanted to find, like case studies. And I ended up compiling a bunch of sources and over the last say, I've been doing the newsletter for two weeks, a half years. But in the last year and a half, um, more or less. and less it's coming from Google searches and the actively finding stuff.
And now journalists are contacting me. Agencies are contacting me and letting me know like of their upcoming stuff. So it really turned, I started as like literally knowing almost nothing in this world, only knowing my own company's, uh, workings. And now I have a very broad view of the entire industry and people are sending me.
I probably receive like 5 to 10 emails a week of like, here's what's going on in our world. And I love it. Like, I wish more people would send me emails because most of them go into the newsletter. They know my rules, they know it's gotta be positive, it's gotta be data informed and it's gotta be insightful and they send it to me and I include it.
David: [00:04:46] That's awesome. Yeah. So that gives a very unique mix of content. So, Andrew, um, where do you think the industry is right now? It's a question I like to ask.
Andrew: [00:04:56] So, so I mean right now, as in like this year or this month, because this month yeah.
David: [00:05:03] Let's make it this year. I mean, coronavirus definitely changed the game for the entire thing, but, uh, let's make it this year.
How has the industry evolved and where do you see it going?
Andrew: [00:05:15] Yeah, so, um, I think so if you had asked me this question before 2020, um, funny enough, the answer would be the exact same as I am about to tell you now. So there is no, almost no difference. And in fact, coronavirus has impacted the industry by just speeding up what I'm about to say.
Um, so the industry as a whole isn't necessarily one thing like influencer marketing and influencers are sharing. Only a little bit because influencers and creators have a larger, um, economy. Like the creator economy is way bigger than the influencer marketing industry. And the influencer marketing industry has a lot of strata or layers. And they won't mix.
Like with your yourself, you, you, you specialize in my micro influencer marketing.There are companies that specialize in the biggest top celebrity influencers. There are verticalized. There are people like Black Girl Digital is literally two black women who were running an influencer marketing agency. They tell you right up front, who they are, what they want.
Um, The Gay Passport tells you they travel, they're gay. They're working with influencers who are traveling gay. Like there are huge amounts of verticalized, infants, or agencies around topics. There's also verticalize around style.
Like, are you micro influencer? Macro influencer? Celebrity? Um, there's also styles of influence marketing, like more relationship based versus like media trades. Um, this was on exhibit end of 2019. And what I said then, and still holds true now is there is just an explosion of these verticals. Everyone is niching down, prioritizing and really focusing on one core thing.
So the influencer marketing industry is only getting a wider and taller and bigger niche. So each individual entity is saying that they're really planting a flag right in what they are doing. And so in total, the industry is fantastic. The industry is looking really, really good that a brand or a marketer who wants to spend money can spend money in almost any way they want to and find the agency or work that they want to do with someone.
David: [00:07:46] Yeah, and I, I love that point you brought up earlier about, um, influencers being just one portion of the revenue for creators, meaning that these influencers are making money with brands. That's only one revenue stream, right? These influencers have other revenue streams that they're capitalizing on, which makes the whole industry even more interesting.
Andrew: [00:08:06] Yeah. And so, uh, so this week, actually that we're recording this, I'm literally launching, um, what's called Creator Scape and I'm launching it with influence.co. So they're hosting it. A year ago in 2019, I created Creator Scape and I released it on my own website, but this is a 2020 update and it's exploded.
So last year when I createdit, creators, Kate, myself, it showed from a creator's perspective. What money, what revenue models can they use? Only one of the, one of them, there was like 627 companies on this, on this page. Last year, 400 of them were influencer agencies, but that was only one category out of about 15 that influencers could make money on.
So creators can make money in like 15 different ways. Only one of which was brand deals. Um, this year, however we focused on what are the, what are the business models and activities of creator actually has real, um, what is it like precedence over. Like they can actually physically do it because influencer marketing, most agencies will only contact influencers when they have a gap a again, they go way.
So what we did is we focused on the companies and the business models that a creator can actively pursue. So creator scape, 2020 only looked at about last year. I had about a hundred companies in the categories that we picked this year in those same categories, over 280 companies. So almost three X, the amount of companies are helping creators monetize or build or do production than last year.
David: [00:09:52] I know we like to talk about influencer marketing, but I'm curious, how do creators right now seek to monetize other than influencer marketing? What are the trends in there?
Andrew: [00:10:03] So the bigger trends. So let me first say, what is down is ad revenue. So about three, two years ago, there was the ad apocalypse on YouTube, but generally speaking, ad revenue for creators and ad sharing revenue, sharing on platforms is very hard to get. YouTube still remains one of only few.
TikTok is not sharing and revenue. SnapChat is not sharing ad revenue. Twitter is not sharing ad revenue. Um, Instagram is definitely not sharing out revenue. Obviously there are ways around that. Like Twitter does have a Twitter video. You can sign up as a publisher that Snap has snapped discover, but those are very much gated communities.
Um, it is not like YouTube where I create or can just create a channel, get through a couple of levels. And then generally programmatically I enter into a partner program and make ad revenue. YouTube still remains the only one. And so there's more platforms, less ad revenue for creators
But here's the other things that are just absolutely amazing for which we have access. It's like one-on-one chats. It's like live stream. It used to be live streaming like you now, but now we have Super Pier. We have Charitybuzz. We have Briefly, Cameo, Darryl,
David: [00:11:34] What are those exactly the, uh, what do they consist of?
Andrew: [00:11:38] So these are companies that are selling essentially versions of live streaming or versions of making a custom video.
So it's Cameo, um, Charitybuzz, Starsona. Um, these are companies that you can ask a creator to make a video for you or to have a one on one chat with, um, there's Throne Live there's YouNow. This is what is considered live streaming before.
David: [00:12:08] That's an interesting venue of the industry. So essentially these creators are being paid for their creative side, more than their audience in this sense.
Andrew: [00:12:18] Uh, they are, so this is, it's a weird little category, so it's, it's, um, not content and licensing, which we have it on, on this chart of creators. So content and licensing actually is, is getting big to where influencers are selling like actual pieces of their work for the rights to it. So that's like, um, Juke and Medius, Storyful, you can even sell on Unsplash. Be real for drone operators, Vimeo stock for video people, Shutterstock, Epidemic Sound if you want to spell your, um, audio. Getty Images, if you want to sell photos. there's a lot of ways to sell individual content. Yeah. But it's like, how do you get a request?
That you need to have a platform where a fan can ask a creator. Can you make a video about this? Or can you make a video for my dad that wish him happy birthday? That's what's happening.
David: [00:13:10] Okay. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.
Andrew: [00:13:14] A membership. So the other category that's up until the right is, is memberships. Um, there is a incredible amount of tools online to build membership communities, but also just to charge for memberships.
That includes your Patreon, but also includes SubStack. If you want to just send a newsletter. That includes Podia. If you want to send, sell digital products, but also set up a membership, um, I mean YouTube gaming and Twitch. You can sign up for a membership for a channel as well. Um, memberships like doubled or tripled since last year.
David: [00:13:47] The subscription, the subscription membership is taking over.
I mean the Patreon model was just being replicated and it's a good thing for these creators.
Andrew: [00:13:58] Well, it's been replicated, but in very interesting ways, right? Like SubStack has been around three years and you pay for a newsletter just straight up. Here's in your inbox, an email every week you have Super Cast supporting cast for a podcast.
You have Ghost if you want to create a publishing platform.
David: [00:14:18] Yeah. That's what we use on our blog.
Andrew: [00:14:21] You don't charge for memberships yet?
David: [00:14:23] No, no, we don't. We have a lot of features out of the box.
Andrew: [00:14:29] Yeah. And there's also like for podcasts has exploded the subscription model. Radio Public, Super Cast as I said before. Supporting Cast, Stream Labs, um, there's the AECOM.
So if you're right, there is a way to charge subscription model. If you make video, there's a way to start a subscription model. If you just do audio, there's a way to charge subscription model that has really blown up in the last year. And these companies have been around for a couple of years. So they're all very good technology.
David: [00:14:58] Yeah. So for the people listening to this on audio, I'm Andrew created a huge visual piece with all these companies on it, where you can visualize each company by category. I'll add the link in the show notes. Andrew, if the, if it is released, when were you planning on releasing this?
Andrew: [00:15:14] That's literally being released as we're recording this tomorrow.
So when you releasem, this will already be out.
David: [00:15:20] In the show notes, definitely.
Andrew: [00:15:23] Um, so yeah, it's really interesting also that ad revenue, the, the increase in the category of ad revenue has actually, actually, we were seeing more marketplaces now. So ad revenue was it used to be like you share your ad revenue that you make when you create content and you make ad revenue from ads before or after your video, right on YouTube.
But lately since. So FameBit was like one of the most, um, well known and it got bought by YouTube, but there's a bunch of other platforms now that are marketplaces for branded content. So we have thought leaders paved and their video and newsletters and all types of stuff. Like now you're selling ads within your own content.
You don't have to rely on ads being sold in front of your content anymore.
David: [00:16:22] Yeah. And that's one of the points I wanted to address with you because this, you know, there was always this, uh, this duality between marketplace versus, you know, discovery and outreaching yourself. So what's your take on the place of a marketplace right now in the current influencer marketing space.
Andrew: [00:16:41] Okay. So the data tells me that marketplaces don't work. That's like,um, I think, but yeah, by the time already, just last week, um, FameBit literally put out a message that said, like, we're closing our marketplace because it only makes up like 5% of our revenue, like, and it takes up like way more than that in, in cost.
David: [00:17:07] What leads the rest of their revenue?
Andrew: [00:17:09] Managed services and agency work.
David: [00:17:11] Yeah. Okay.
Andrew: [00:17:14] And so what's interesting is. We're finding out that like those marketplaces don't work, but I'm sure that what looks like a marketplace on the outside, but works differently on the inside is going to work somehow in some way and is going to figure this out.
Um, cause there's still more marketplaces that are exist. Right. And they keep popping up. Is it because like, the question is, is it because they think they have something different? or they know something different? or they're verticalizing buy sell ads?
Carbon ads is a really good example. Like they are for developers, for designers. Like if you're, if you're a company that wants to get in front of developers, you go there. If you're a publisher that has developers, you go there.
So what's interesting is verticalized markets might actually work way better. As long as those verticals are big enough to handle a marketplace bulls. We won't, we won't know, like we'll know in, in like a year too late.
David: [00:18:11] We'll know, once it works, right? And that's, that's essentially it. That's how it's going to go. And, you know, just picking your brain here, what do you think a marketplace that works with look like? Cause clearly FameBit looked promising, um, I thought it was actually working, you know, but now I see that it didn't. So agency as being the biggest part of the revenue.
What's your take on what's a good marketplace?
Andrew: [00:18:36] Well, so fundamentally, and I've talked about this a little bit with my, in my newsletter, as much as I could to like follow this trend of agency or marketplace, because it's a good question for brands. It's a good question for also creators to know, like what should I be spending my time on?
It seems so on the outside. When, when you talk about like influencer marketing marketplace, let's talk about that. It seems like a great sell. A publisher or a creator or an influencer sets up their profile and then gets brands. A brand can find a bunch of influencers at the same time. What ends up happening though, is that influencer marketing individually. Why a marketplace should work is that it should decrease the amount of work on both sides
But fundamentally, on inside, it actually increases the work. Because when now you had like a direct. I you have a, a company that uses a database to find the influencers, reach out to them and get their responses, do you want to work with us? Yes or no. What's your rate? That is, uh, one unit of distance.
When you create the marketplace, you create two distances of you, two units of distance, but both of those have to go back and forth. So you end up having four. So you actually squared. The amount of work, you didn't decrease the amount of homework you actually squared increasing it.
David: [00:20:13] Certainly I think you, you ,ark a good point there. Um, you know, it's not like a buying backlinks on a publisher marketplace in the SEO space where you can just pay and it's transactional. There's always going to be back and forth on how you want the product to be placed, how you want the product to be, you know, put forward with selling points you want.
So you sign up to a marketplace to still have those conversations, like you said, so you had extra points of contact to have these conversations.
Andrew: [00:20:41] I think. And what I'm telling you now is like a problem that is as fundamental to influencer marketing, but someone's going to figure it out. I hope like I hope someone figures out like a good way to do this.
Um, and what's interesting too, is in a normal ad revenue. So why Facebook and Google dominate ad revenue is that it is double blind. Uh, an advertiser doesn't necessarily know exactly what is placed a publisher. If you have a fee, if you are on Facebook and are creating like a feed content, you don't know, you know, if what ads are being placed against your content.
Um, so it's double blind and this allows both parties to. You trust Facebook, you trust that the app, the CPMs are correct. You have this trust in influencer marketing though. The best work I've ever seen an influencer marketing is double opt in. It's not double-blind. And so what happens is, again, you're not.
Double-blind decreases the amount of work for both sides. I don't have to care. I don't have to approve of any ads that are on my platform because I just use my platform as a marketer. I don't have to approve of any publishers that are on. And again, And by the way, the, one of the biggest things I note is like, this is why ad apocalypse happened is because marketers realized on YouTube, like, Oh my videos, my ads are being placed against this content.
I don't like it. They wanted a little extra bit of approval. And so, yeah. Um, so it's interesting, you know, that these. These flyers show up all the time. Um, but these features, these flaws can be features and these features can be flaws. Um, but influencer marketing right at this moment, the absolute best I have seen has been double opt in, right.
A brand and a creator, both approve of working with each other and both bring the creative aspect to it. The brands is here. We're going to give you these resources. We're going to give you this unique thing we're going to do. And a creator says, okay, I'm going to bring my creative cronies. And I'm going to make something for my audience that only I can make for this audience.
David: [00:22:52] Exactly. And I agree with that. I mean, the best relationships you can build with influencers are treating them as your creative consultants, having them be part of the project. If you're making influencer marketing, transactional, you get, you get less optimal results.
And if you're you, like you said, double opt in, I think is the right term to this. The influencer buys in and you buy in it's, it's, it's, it's bound for success. They know their audience better than you do, and they know how to tell their audience about your product better than you do.
Andrew: [00:23:22] And, uh, and I'm not, um, I'm not a shill. I'm not like I'm not, um, what I'm about to say is not like a, I'm not a salesman or a pitchman,
But My God like agencies are literally like the best way to do it marketing because an agency is going to have the creative experience of creating a campaign, like brands who do influencer marketing on their own. The only ones that succeed are the ones that have internal, creative talent.
David: [00:23:53] Investing resources, investing resources heavily into it. It's not a set it and forget it kind of thing.
[00:24:00] Andrew: And so like, by the way, like I am bullish on agencies. I think that over the course of the next. Five years, we're going to see 10 X, the number of agencies, I think agencies are going to get slimmer, but also that you're going to see some consolidation. Um, you're going to see people like, especially just what's going on now is rapidly making every change that I said about a year ago happened faster.
It's like, people are losing their jobs at the middle sized agencies, because like the work is just evaporating and their salaries can't it can't be paid. So what do they do? They can't do anything other than create their own agencies or a mom and pop shop. So we have now, like people who worked at like 50 to 75 person companies, that those companies are now like 20 to 30 people.
It was all the people that got laid off are like, I still got to eat. So let me at least do some freelance work way less overhead. And I can also verticalize and niche down to say like, Hey, I did 10 campaigns in the beauty industry. I'm only gonna do. I'm only going to work with clients that are in the beauty industry that work with Arab, uh, creators in Qatar like that, like a few agencies and there's enough work there.
David: [00:25:13] And there's a market. Exactly. There's a market enough to feed a family. And for employees quite easily, there is a big market for all these sub verticals. You're
Andrew: [00:25:22] Absolutely right on that. Like, you're going to be like, you're going to find like five agencies in the next year. I like selling tennis rackets to pros.
Like you find it's like a B2B influencers for tennis rackets, but there'll be five of them.
David: [00:25:38] I mean, there's, there's jobs, there's jobs, the market's growing, the spend is growing and yeah.
Andrew: [00:25:44] Yeah. Year over year. You're going to see the spend in influence marketing increased because it's part of digital, right,
Right at this moment. But digital marketing is down like 33%, but traditional marketing is down 39%. What you're going to see when it rebounds. When it comes back at in Q3-Q4, because there will only, they could only spend in digital from, for the rest of 2020 until 2021. You can't spend on out-of-home like there's nowhere to spend.
There's no, there's no. Um, there's no inventory. So the only inventory that exists and the biggest change that I see also in the next five years is that right at this moment, you have about. I don't know anywhere between two and 20 million people. At home that are starting their side hustle, they are creating their own YouTube channel for the very first time they're writing their newsletter for the very first time they are creating their blog for the very first time, but we only see, we only see the results about a year later.
It takes about 12 months to a year to really get a good audience built up. And so in about a year, You know, spring 2021, you're going to find about 10 to 1% of those people now have like a successful, good big audience. And so you're going to see like an explosion of inventory online. A niche down. So agencies have to pop up.
There will be more and more agencies. There's going to be like two X to three X, the agencies, because there's going to be two to three X, the amount of content next year.
David: [00:27:23] Yeah. And I mean, from what I see on the agency side is a lot of people are going to influencers as well to create their content, um, outsourcing completely their product photography to a network of influencers, cuts down the content costs like crazy.
And gives you content that's relatable, which converts way more in Facebook ads. So I can definitely see that.
Andrew: [00:27:45] And you're going to find out that like in a year, every, every illustrator that a year before you were paying like a hundred bucks for their, like, you know, one logo, they now have, you know, a hundred thousand followers.
So you want to get. You know them to promote your product as well as like work for you. So like content selling content is a really good thing for small audience creators, but suddenly, and about a year, you're going to have people all have an audience. Like now they're going to have the audience and the they're going to not just be, Oh, they're a micro influencer with, with good content.
They're like, Oh no, there are a hundred thousand.
David: [00:28:25] Yeah. And a hundred thousand comes quick. Right? If you keep at it, it's a, it comes, it comes quick. And so I guess their audience is essentially kind of like a resume to their skill in many ways.
Andrew: [00:28:38] Yeah. Social group, social group, but also audience is a lagging indicator of quality.
Like. Quality content. And you never saw it. It takes so long to figure out what an audience wants, because you got to like, put it out there, test it, try it. And you have to try it 52 times. Like what I've seen whenever I ever, anytime I've ever started a YouTube channel or started something, it doesn't hit for a year.
For some reason, it's a magical number, like right around one year. If you do something 52 times in a row, People will take notice about a year later, like huge amount of difference a year later.
David: [00:29:16] That's awesome. That is awesome. So let me just bring this in another direction, cause I just want to cover these topics.
Um, so what are the challenges you encounter when consulting with clients? I know you consult a lot with clients on how they should do influencer marketing and how they should take it forward and so forth. And I would love to know what the challenges you are seeing right now.
Andrew: [00:29:38] The challenges in influencer marketing agency?
David: [00:29:43] Yeah, no, I mean, are you, so you're consulting with agencies and brands, is that correct? From what I recall?
Andrew: [00:29:50] Yes. So, so I hope so basically I do what I do in my newsletter, but privately, so essentially getting, um, doing research reports for agencies and brands and saying like, Hey, like, yes, they publicly like reveal all this stuff week over week.
But funny enough in my newsletter, like not everybody reads everything I put out. So it ends up being that I'm literally the only person that reads every single article. And I read about a hundred articles a week. So you get, you get the, like distilled 10 to 15 articles holes in my newsletter, but really there's like more than I read about the industry.
David: [00:30:29] The compound knowledge is what you're selling these.
Andrew: [00:30:32] Yeah. And also I have all everything archived so that I can easily like grab it. Whereas like the newsletter, you have to know where like each of the links are or have them in your email, which actually some people I've heard, like keep the emails in their inbox and use it as like a search engine to like find what they want and look for.
Um, so what I do is actually I'm releasing this fairly soon. It's probably. If this is in May, so I'd probably be sometime in June or July, I'm releasing my library for subscribers. So it's awesome. You get the free newsletter, but if you want to pay like five bucks a month, you'll have access to all their archives and search, forums.
David: [00:31:09] And what are the biggest challenges you see that they're facing right now in terms of the influencer marketing?
Andrew: [00:31:17] So again, like I'll, I'll repeat something that I mentioned earlier is like one of the flaws of influencer marketing is the feature is that it takes an incredible amount of creative, um, talent and creativity to create a good campaign.
I think the biggest threat to influencer marketing right now is getting away from the campaign. If a brand works with creators directly, they may lose creating a very good campaign. They might say like, Oh, well, we should work with these 10 influencers every once a month, every month on whatever they want, they lose the brand voice.
They lose creatively putting together those 10 people into a unique event that only exists at that moment. Um, and I don't know if I can explain that very well. Or if that's something that people will just automatically understand is that there is influencers, there is brands, there's ads, and then there's the campaign, which is the creative amalgamation or collection of those creative pieces of work.
Yeah.
David: [00:32:25] Under one like common theme, let's put it that way.
Andrew: [00:32:28] So temporarily there is some limit pains. Yeah. There is the, I have seen over, I don't know, maybe the last two years, some reports that show that always on campaigns are they, they quote unquote, say that they're increasing, but I don't think that's right.
The actual answer. So I looked at collectively how to report and they surveyed like, do you have an always on campaign? And they did it two years in a row. And funny enough in there, each of those reports, they said, they said in their report, companies are increasingly doing more, always on campaigns. But if you look at the reports year over year, less of a percentage said yes to only doing always on the second year.
So what I think is happening. Is that maybe collectively there are more companies doing always on campaigns, but because more, more companies are doing campaigns in general, but the percentage that are doing always on is getting less.
David: [00:33:29] Yeah. That would make sense. And I just, just for the audience, can you clarify what the, what do you mean by an always on campaign?
Andrew: [00:33:37] So that's actually a, one of my problems of the survey is that they didn't really necessarily define always on as well. And I can't really define it what I imagine. And this is totally my own imagination. Is that what they mean by always on is that. Our influencer marketing is not based on only doing quarterly launches or when we have products that we are always working with influencers, which is not an always on campaign.
It is that you are always doing influencer marketing. It's a bit of a word salad. I hope there's an actual answer.
David: [00:34:14] I can see, I can see those was kind like, Hey, no, I'm always, I'm doing an always on meaning that I'm like always doing influencer marketing versus like, no, I'm working with the same influencers.
I have someone on my team dedicated to talking with them to keep the relation. In fact, that's what I consider always on, but maybe the survey people actually just always on is just, yeah, I'm always doing influencer marketing.
Andrew: [00:34:35] Exactly. Yeah. There, there is like a bit of, um, I imagine that the actual people who are working with the same creators year over year is very small.
We know them all. We, I cover all of the times when the there's like signed to a year long contract, I cover them all. And it's very few.
David: [00:34:52] Yeah. I agree with that. There's very few, um, with some of our clients, you know, we. We keep an ongoing relationship with our ambassadors, our top performers, we call them VIP to be more specific and we send them product regularly, keep a relation.
We have a dedicated account manager because that's where we get all the results. I mean, if someone's posting a picture with our product for the fourth time in, you know, three, four months, like some point people are actually trusting it as genuine,
Andrew: [00:35:20] Like you can compound effect.
David: [00:35:22] Exactly. And it doesn't look sell out.
We try to stay away from that. And that's one of the problems I think. And I'd like to have your opinion on that. I think there's a lot of sellout effects. You know, a lot of influencers have fake engagement and so forth and their, their profiles are, are eight, eight out of 10 posts are like a copy and paste of like just some script that they were given by the company.
And it's sponsored at 8 out of 10 post is sponsored. Like they lost all the trust from their audience. What do you think about that?
Andrew: [00:35:52] Well, I mean, I think that's very easy to pick out those people. It's very hard to pick out the people. Mmm. Okay. Doing a good job because you don't realize it, right? Like, um, it's sort of, the influencers have to pass the smell test and some companies are not savvy enough.
Some companies are not savvy enough to understand that influencer marketing is different than influencers. Yeah.
David: [00:36:20] I liked that. I really liked that.
Andrew: [00:36:21] And that's a, it's a huge divide. I see. I see a big actual like threat. And I've heard this now from about two or three CEOs of influence. Talk to that threat to them personally.
And their company is, is the term influencer marketing. If there was a better. A better way to distance themselves from individual influencers. They would, one is I'm going to out them now, because if you find that they're probably the only one that says it, like they do relationship management. Okay. Like that's a little esoteric, a little worse for them.
I mean, that works when it's like, Oh, I don't as a company, as a brand. I don't want influencers. I want relationships. It's like, Oh yeah, like that sounds good.
David: [00:37:11] Powerful. And I mean, I think it is a good, even if it's a debate on like the meaning of the words. I think it's good to have that divide because influencer marketing is just a term being tossed around by marketers.
Andrew: [00:37:24] And it actually has a real, real meaning where influencer marketing is. You're not buying billboards, you're not buying. So influencer marketing is true means you go and find the actual individuals who determine and, and, and impact the decision making and purchase decisions of your consumers. Not all consumers.
So. What has been compounded and I'm actually sort of okay with it because it's exploded. The inference of marketing industry is compounding that the own influencer marketing is not only online, digital creators. That is one part of it. You mind if I give you like an example of influencer marketing?
So, um, this is actually from like 30 years ago, camel cigarettes. It's one of the best the case studies I've ever read where like, The marketer for camel cigarettes realized that every bartender in New York city has a pack of cigarettes and gives away free cigarettes to patrons. And so what he did is instead of going and just buying ads, he literally went and just gave free camel cigarettes to every bartender in New York.
That's like, And now that cigarette was in the mouth of consumers was being given to them. It's gift quote, unquote gifting. Right. But it has no relate. It was before any social media existed before you had any type of idea of creator, what do you found is the influencer in people's decision to smoke?
Right?
David: [00:39:04] Um, that is good.
Andrew: [00:39:06] And I think it's a good thing framework too, to understand what, how influencer marketing could be powerful is if you could get your product or service into the hands of someone who has an audience that is looking for that. Right. It's not an audience. I think we also confuse like having an audience with like having an audience for your product.
Um, one of the best examples of influencer marketing that works me in particular is I was trying to learn calligraphy. And I was watching YouTube channels on calligraphy and they would literally say I'm using my Tom Tom boat pen. And so they didn't say like, go buy this. Here's my affiliate link. I watched them use it.
I tried to learn calligraphy without it. I couldn't. And literally I'm holding right now at Tom bullpen. Like I went and bought this because I saw it used in a YouTube video.
David: [00:40:01] And here you are mentioning it on the podcast. So it carries weight. It carries weight. Definitely
Andrew: [00:40:07] Because it works. I mean, that, that is getting your product in front of people who
David: [00:40:12] I actually need your pilot.
Yeah, exactly. One more than needed, but yeah, that's awesome. That is, that is very good. I think, I think I saw that case study in your newsletter if I'm not mistaken, is that correct?
Andrew: [00:40:24] The camel one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I covered it. It was such a great article. Embodied influencer marketing without influencers.
David: [00:40:32] I mean, there's like as bad as cigarette companies are, there's so much to learn in marketing from them.
They're always constrained by they're constrained to the neck all the time. And then they come out with strategies to distribute that. I mean, they're, they're always ahead of marketing. I'll link to that case study in the show notes as well. If you can send it to me afterwards. Yeah, it was a good read.
And, uh, Andrew let's, uh, let's keep we're running low on time right now. I just wanted to end this discussion on, on, uh, your food network competition. So how did that go? I saw that you participated in a food network show. So I want to know about that.
Andrew: [00:41:09]Yeah. When I. When I moved to LA, I was off. I thought I would work in film and TV and I did. But I also like all my friends are comedians and, um, yeah, we applied for a food network show.
I am the gizzard wizard. I cook really good gizzards. And so we applied to a food network show that was looking for amateurs chefs to when a food truck, it was called food truck face off. Um, me and a friend, we dressed up as wizards and chicken and we, yeah, we, we I'm on the food network, I'm on thefood network show.
Spoiler alert: I didn't win. I don't have a food truck called the Gizzard Wizard. I still have the shirt.
David: [00:41:59] I mean, went for food truck, ended with a shirt. Not that bad.
Andrew: [00:42:04] Oh, I, I brought the shirt when I made a Gizzard wizard shirt and I brought it with me, so.
David: [00:42:09] Oh, you made the shirt. Okay. Gotcha. All right.
Andrew: [00:42:11] I didn't like literally the only thing we got out of it, we didn't, I don't think we got paid.
We got a free trip to Toronto to, um, film. That was awesome. Cause we could film for our YouTube channel. At the time we had a foodie YouTube channel called travel bites here.
David: [00:42:28] That's awesome. So, Andrew, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and, uh, if you guys want to contact Andrew, what's the best place that people can contact you?
Andrew: [00:42:40] Well sign up for the newsletter influenceweekly.co and then reply to any of those. I reply to every email that I can hopefully, unless it goes to my spam folder. And sometimes I reply to those too. Um, yeah, you can reply to me at [email protected]. Oh, just at the newsletter you get, you can reply to anyone say you got a good article out of it, or want to learn more.
I'm happy to. Uh, jump on a call with any agencies and see what they're doing. I started keeping my pulse on the, I keep my finger on the pulse of the industry by talking to people like yourself who are in the industry and, and give me like, sort of anecdotal information and I add it up and like a, a really good viewpoint on the industry.
David: [00:43:03] Yeah, you definitely have a very nice global viewpoint of the industry as a whole. Thanks for, thanks for listening guys. And we'll talk next week.
