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- TikTok Plans to Share Ad Revenue With Creators for the First Time
- Snap Pixy: hands-on with Snapchat’s selfie drone
- No-Name YouTuber Crushing ESPN In NBA Video Views
- Costa, Heineken And Coke Promise To Help Close The Influencer Pay Gap
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Great Reads
Scout Sobel: Placing Women At The Forefront Of Podcasting
With this fierce determination, Scout Sobel began crafting her PR agency, using a range of unique steps to help capture both the right clients and opportunities for them. Sobel further explains that
‘I decided on these three services. The first was, if you have a podcast, we will book high-profile guests onto your podcast because that’s what I was doing for Okay Sis. Then the second became our bread and butter. It’s what we’re known for and it’s a podcast tour. So getting female entrepreneurs as guests on other podcasts, going on a bunch of them to sell their business and product. Then I threw in traditional PR because I didn’t think anybody would sign me if I didn’t have that traditional aspect.’
Scout’s Agency has grown into an undeniable success, supporting creators such as Rebecca Minkoff and Lauren McGoodwin. The agency has even created an alluring course that helps other businesses build their own podcast tours.
‘I realized that podcasting and being a guest on a podcast was the new form of PR or was going to be the new form of PR. That it is one of the most powerful forms of PR because it was intimate and it was long-form.’
Scout’s Agency welcomes female entrepreneurs from all backgrounds, creating an intelligent intake form to help streamline her in-depth recruitment process. Sobel further describes her recruitment process.
Current helped MrBeast and Airrack build their careers. Now it's looking to fund its next big star
Hadi’s strategy works so well because he’s so well connected to the creator community. He was able to forge relationships with Donaldson and Decker when they were still starting out on YouTube, and because he looked after them, they are eager to work with him at Current. This led to a unique partnership between Decker and Hadi that gave the exec a chance to pass his knowledge onto the next generation of influencers.
Decker is the force behind Creator Now, a digital classroom that educates up-and-comers on the ins-and-outs of the online video biz. The course is broken up into “seasons,” with 300 creators participating in each one. For the latest season, Decker called on Hadi and brought him in as a guest lecturer who could talk about the influencer marketing experience.
“Adam was not afraid to tell the creators in our community when their integrations needed work and why he felt that way. That honest & brutal feedback is what makes Creator Now so special,” Decker told Tubefilter. “No one is here to give/receive participation trophies or to hear that their videos are amazing when they’re not and Adam did a great job at teaching our community what brands want to see when they partner with creators and how to be successful when you get the chance to partner with a brand like Current.
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Campaign Insights
Costa, Heineken And Coke Promise To Help Close The Influencer Pay Gap
Major brands including Boots, Heineken, Johnson & Johnson, Costa and Coke have committed to better diversity, inclusion and representation in their influencer marketing activities, including closing the ethnicity pay gap.
Discrimination within the influencer marketing space has been well-documented in the past few years, especially when it comes to payment.
“For real progress to be made, we need all parts of the ecosystem – brands, agencies and influencers themselves – to work together,” she added.
Now, a total of 23 major advertisers and 13 talent agencies and influencers have given their backing to a revised code from Isba aimed at addressing this pay gap and improving diversity within their own teams.
The three new principles include:
Be allies in addressing the unacceptable pay gaps in influencer marketing, including those based on race and gender
Regularly audit the diversity of the pool of talent with which they work
Work to address diversity in their own marketing teams, to promote truly inclusive campaigns
How infant formula makers are saturating mothers' social media
In the United States alone, the amount the infant formula industry spent on advertising on Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter nearly doubled to $3.82 million in 2021 versus 2017, according to Nielsen. Companies spent more on using digital marketing to sell infant formula last year than on any other type of advertising, the data showed.
"Where two or three years ago less than 5% of their budgets went into influencer marketing, now that could be anywhere from 25% to 50% of their budget," said Maria Sipka, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Linqia, which has worked on more than 20 campaigns for infant nutrition brands including Nestle's Gerber Good Start #forumlaforhappiness campaign.
Sipka said the true value of an influencer campaign is that it must not "smell like it's a promotion".
In a Linqia client brief seen by Reuters, influencer mothers were told by an unnamed food company that its infant formula is the only one that contains ""a probiotic clinically shown to reduce crying by up to 50% in colicky breastfed infants"" that is "ideal for formula-fed babies."
How Ellesse Took To TikTok To Grow Brand Beyond 90s Nostalgists
Having been engaged for the campaign, MediaCom set about appraising the online retail space to see where Ellesse could add value to the e-commerce experience. Research into both Generation Z and millennials demonstrated a disconnect between the time they spent online and the actual motivations they have for making a purchase: fully three-quarters of the target audience are more motivated by in-store experiences than the products themselves.
As a result, MediaCom attempted to put the experience back into shopping by launching a live shoppable TikTok concert featuring the musician Zara Larsson. The e-commerce functions of TikTok meant that while audiences were watching the concert, they could purchase any of the Ellesse looks being showcased by Larsson and her back-up dancers.
The concert was promoted in advance using the hashtag #BeBold, by which users could submit videos of themselves dancing for potential inclusion in the concert video. MediaCom also enlisted nine TikTok celebrities – all garbed in Ellesse clothing – to promote the live event.
The results
In the run-up to the gig the campaign received over 700,000 dance video submissions, while the actual live experience generated 4.2bn hashtag views and 92m engagements, which the team noted far exceeded all its success metrics.
Why Athletic Brewing is tapping college athletes as influencers
Scroll down the official Athletic Brewing Instagram page, and plastered throughout its profile are the familiar faces of some of the top college athletes in the country.
The non-alcoholic beer brand formed partnerships with Texas Longhorns running back Bijan Robinson, Ohio State quarterback CJ Stroud and South Carolina women’s basketball guard Brea Beal. On Instagram, some of these college athletes can be seen holding a can of Athletic with “paid partnership” written beneath their usernames.
Less than a year ago, partnerships like this that would allow college athletes to profit off of their names, images and likenesses (NIL) weren’t possible for any brand. A mix of new state laws and a policy change from the NCAA that took effect in July allowed these deals to take place. Athletic Brewing had been one of the brands that jumped on the opportunity early on, allowing it to snag influencer-like deals with top college athletes to promote the brand and drive engagement.
“We always want to try and be first,” Athletic Brewing chief marketing officer Andrew Katz said. “We’re not afraid to try things and have them not turnout. But the thing that we don’t like to do is sit on the sidelines.”
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Interesting People
The Real Cost of Being a Food Content Creator
There are three generations of food influencers, the way Swimmer sees it. The first are the food bloggers of the late aughts, who built loyal readerships by taking beautiful photos of the food they made or ate while sharing snippets of their lives — think Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, Gina Homolka of Skinnytaste, or Bonjwing Lee of the Ulterior Epicure. The second arose from YouTube: home cooks or professional chefs with the know-how (and cash) to produce slickly shot videos of themselves cooking and eating on a level that rivaled the Food Network. It’s the era that made food personalities like Hot Ones’ Sean Evans and Binging With Babish’s Andrew Rea internet superstars. This second generation of food influencers made money via sponsored content (incorporating a product into a video) or through YouTube’s then-extremely lucrative automated ad-roll program.
TikTok changed everything. What would have taken a personal blog or a YouTube channel years to gain a sturdy audience and national recognition now can happen virtually overnight. This is the third generation of foodie influencer: People, particularly very young ones, build massive followings thanks to a streak of viral videos, and within about six months can expect an onslaught of emails from brands asking them to create sponsored videos.
No-Name YouTuber Crushing ESPN In NBA Video Views
Ever heard of Jimmy Highroller? Excuse us. It’s actually spelled “JxmyHighroller,” for you NBA fanatics.
Anyway, if you’ve never heard of Jimmy (or Jxmy), don’t feel bad. A lot of us haven’t — and that includes fans of the NBA, the league that serves as the focus of Jimmy’s YouTube channel.
But just know he is a YouTube creator whose video views are “crushing” the numbers put forth by media behemoth ESPN, as written by Ethan Strauss in his excellent Substack newsletter, House of Strauss.
“Based on objective standards and my own subjective social circle canvassing, Jimmy Highroller is a giant in my industry, one of the most popular men in NBA media, if not the most popular,” Strauss wrote.
ESPN would kill for videos that rack up his numbers. When you compare Jimmy against ESPN over a span of the last two years, Highroller has produced three videos that would rank as ESPN’s most watched. And Jimmy doesn’t have the entire Disney apparatus pushing his content. He appears to be crushing Goliath as a singular force.
Wellness Influencer Ayda Field Williams Launches High-end Athleisure label, Ayda
“This is 100 percent my first venture into clothing,” Williams said in a telephone interview from her Los Angeles home. “I have had the thought for quite some time, and I’ve always been passionate about fitness and wellness, and the only things I wear is my athleisure,” said the mother of four.
Williams said she had thought for awhile to do an activewear line, but she had a lot of self-doubt and felt it was a saturated market and she wasn’t a wealthy investor. But during COVID-19, when everyone was free-falling, she thought, “I can f–king do this.”
Williams felt there were things missing in the pieces she was wearing and they were functional but she didn’t feel attractive in them or empowered in them. They weren’t the type of clothes that she wanted her husband to see her in, or meet her girlfriends in. Williams said she wanted clothes that she could be comfortable in all day since she didn’t have the time to make three wardrobe changes a day.
She started with the sports bra with adjustable straps as a foundation. She said she put hidden pockets in all the pieces for credit cards or iPhones.The leggings are 7/8-length because she feels they are flattering when the ankle shows. She’s also making statement socks, which she sleeps in and wears with her Birkenstocks or just around the house.
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Industry News
TikTok Plans to Share Ad Revenue With Creators for the First Time
TikTok is launching a new way for the top creators on its billion-user app make money — and for advertisers to reach the cream of the short-form video crop.
The company announced TikTok Pulse, an advertising program to let marketers buy inventory in the top 4% of all videos on the platform in a dozen different categories (including beauty, fashion, cooking and gaming). Creators and publishers with at least 100,000 followers will be eligible to participate in the initial stage of TikTok Pulse.
The company said that with the launch of Pulse, it will “begin exploring” its first advertising-revenue share program with creators, public figures and media publishers. The announcement was timed for TikTok’s NewFronts presentation for marketers.
“We’re focused on developing monetization solutions and available markets so that creators feel valued and rewarded on TikTok,” the company, owned by Chinese internet giant Bytedance, said in announcing the program. “From the very beginning, we’ve committed to working with our community to bring new features that enrich the TikTok experience, and we look forward to continuing that journey with TikTok Pulse.”
TikTok Pulse will roll out first in the U.S. in June, with additional markets to follow in the fall, according to Sofia Hernandez, TikTok’s global head of business marketing. “This finally offers marketers something they have been asking for for years — to be part of a community,” she said.
Brainlabs goes shopping again with acquisition of influencer marketing agency Fanbytes
Digital media agency Brainlabs has acquired influencer marketing agency Fanbytes for an undisclosed sum, a deal it says will enable it to ""deliver a full range of performance channels for clients"".
The newcomer to the group will retain the Fanbytes name initially but eventually will be subsumed into the parent brand, Brainlabs told Campaign. The acquisition marks Brainlabs' first major foray into influencer marketing and will complement its "existing creative and social capabilities", the group said. It will help Brainlabs introduce influencer expertise to its markets in the US, Latam and Apac regions.
Fanbytes' 60-strong staff will join its new parent. This includes chief executive Timothy Armoo, who started the business in 2017 while at university, and co-founders Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya. The trio will lead influencer marketing at Brainlabs, with their new job titles reflecting that – respectively they become vice-president influencer, vice-president influencer integration and vice-president influencer tech.
Fanbytes – which was owned by its three founders, with angel investment from industry names Nigel Morris, Guy Phillipson and Jerry Buhlmann – specialises in the TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat platforms, has worked with 500 brands globally, grew 130% in the past five years and and has a client base that includes Samsung, H&M, Estée Lauder, Mattel, Ubisoft and Nike.
It shares Brainlabs' "data-led, test-and-learn" style of marketing and uses a proprietary dataset called Bytesights, containing more than three million influencers. This lets brands monitor growth, predict trends, target the most effective influencers for their needs and ""pinpoint conversations around their products, competitors and sectors"".
Fanbytes has also led projects such as Bytesquad, a group of six TikTok creators who created Europe's first ""TikTok house"" in partnership with 2K Games, Rubik's and Public Health England.
Snap Pixy: hands-on with Snapchat’s selfie drone
More than five years after it released Spectacles, Snap is back with a second hardware product. And this time it flies.
Yes, Snap made a drone. Called Pixy, the small yellow puck takes off from your hand, follows you around, and captures video that can be sent back to Snapchat. It’s Snap’s attempt at making a drone that’s friendlier and more approachable than other products on the market — and it may hint at the more advanced, AR-powered future Snap is building toward.
Pixy is available online for $230 in the US and France starting Thursday. Unlike most existing drones, it’s small and light enough to fit in a pant pocket. There isn’t a controller; it takes off from and lands on an outstretched palm, and it uses six pre-programmed flight patterns that are accessible through a dial on the top of the device.
Why on earth would Snap, which primarily operates an ephemeral messaging app, make a selfie drone? It’s the first question I pose to CEO Evan Spiegel.
“Because we’re a camera company,” he tells me recently over video chat. Snap has brandished that tagline since 2016 when the company changed its name from Snapchat to Snap and released its first pair of Spectacles. “Our mission is to empower people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. And this product does exactly that.”
CPGs Seize On Rocketing TikTok Trends
Smashbox is merely the latest brand to jump on the social platform, but while many companies have solely focused on building out their brand by filming videos that tie into existing trends or bolstering their personality by commenting on relevant and highly viewed content, Smashbox is doing something a little different.
The cosmetics company recently partnered with Camera IQ to launch a TikTok AR effect that promotes its Photo Finish Primers. A new filter called “Smashbox Illuminate” allows users to wear virtual, illuminating makeup, bathing them in a glowing light that emanates from atop the screen. According to Camera IQ, this effort helped Smashbox increase its engagement by over 50% in the first 10 days.
Snapchat’s new ‘Director Mode’ will help anyone become a video creator
In its ongoing battle with TikTok, Snap announced today it’s launching a new feature called Director Mode, aimed at providing easier access to Snapchat’s native creative tools for publishing video on its platform, including to its short-form video feature known as Spotlight. At launch, Director Mode will include a new Dual Camera future that will allow users to record front both the front-facing and back-facing cameras at the same time — a format that’s also being leveraged by the much buzzed-about new app BeReal, but for photo-sharing.
While Snap today already offers a stand-alone video editing app, Story Studio, it sees that as being aimed at more professional creators in search of an advanced suite of tools. Director Mode, meanwhile, will serve as a modular camera mode within Snapchat itself that’s intended to help centralize access to creative tools that would be useful when publishing to Spotlight.
The feature will be available in Snapchat’s main camera tab as well as from Spotlight itself, the company says.
“[Director Mode] surfaces our tools that are intended a little bit more for entertainment creation — if you’re pre-planning a video or if you’re making something that you’re going to be submitting to Spotlight,” notes Sam Corrao Clanon, Snap’s director of Content leading Spotlight, who Snap poached from TikTok last year.
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Registration Required
Great Paywalled Content
With commerce at the center, how an Instagram influencer turned Amazon Live host - Digiday
Enter influencer Katie Sands, who has run her lifestyle and fashion blog — as well as her Instagram account @HonestlyKate since 2016. In early 2020, she joined Amazon Live as one of its first live stream hosts to test, recommend and curate products from the online marketplace that are not only in line with her personal brand but will appeal to her followers to click the buy button.
Sands has 332,000 followers on Instagram and she uses the social platform to give both fans of her blog and fans of her Amazon Live stream a look into her personal life, which is used to plan out the narratives and themes of each live stream. In the two-year period since acting as a host, she has accumulated anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 active viewers per live stream.
Other brands — particularly in the beauty and fashion space — work with Sands in long-term capacities to increase their sales amongst her following, which is where she said the bulk of her income comes from.
In this final episode of the Digiday Podcast’s four-part creator series, Sands unpacks what it is like being an Instagram influencer in 2022 and why working across several platforms is necessary, as well as what it’s been like moving into the considerably newer role of live stream shopping influencer.
The new wave of influencers-as-creative-directors is more than just a PR stunt - Glossy
“The role [of creative director] can be a lot of different things,” said Jeff Staple, designer and creative director of his brand Staple and creative consultancy Reed Art Department. “Each person has their own strengths. Maybe they’re better at sales, better at design, better at being the face of a company or better at collaborations. It’s all about determining where the brand should go.”
For example, since her appointment at Pretty Little Thing, Hague has been both a behind-the-scenes driver of the brand’s direction and its public face. Almost weekly, she posts pics of herself wearing different outfits from the collection, many of which get hundreds of thousands of likes from her 6.3 million followers. Occasionally, those two roles intersect. For example, Hague posted footage and selfies from behind the scenes of Pretty Little Thing’s February fashion show, with individual posts receiving nearly half a million likes.
In many ways, the influencer-as-creative-director is simply an evolution of the relationship between brands and their ambassadors. The line between a one-off collaboration and a genuine partnership has been blurring for years. Look at relationships like the one between Kanye West and Adidas that birthed the mammoth sneaker line Yeezy, or his current partnership with Gap.
Inside TikTok's Private Influencer Listening Parties for New Music - Business Insider
In the summer of 2020, as Miley Cyrus was preparing to release her single "Midnight Sky,""her team began brainstorming which insiders should get early access to hear the track.
""I feel like the traditional way when you're making an album is you go play it for the radio people, the label, you know, the tastemakers,"" said Olivia Rudensky, founder and CEO of Fanmade, a marketing and fan engagement upstart that works on digital strategy with clients like Cyrus and Hailey Bieber.
But for Cyrus' "Plastic Hearts" album release, the team turned to a new set of tastemakers: TikTok influencers.
In partnership with TikTok, it held two listening sessions over Zoom with around 15 creators, sharing snippets of Cyrus' unreleased songs and discussing different ways that the influencers could incorporate "Midnight Sky""into trends.
"These creators are needed in the process,""Rudensky said. "They're just as important as all the relevant stops when you're doing promo or when you're going to tastemakers because they really are the audience that's making or breaking music right now."
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