Christen Nino De Guzman was acutely aware of the creator economy’s pay-disparity issues well before she started working at TikTok during the pandemic. But as she watched more and more influencers rise to prominence amid the app’s boom, she saw the problem getting worse and worse.

Brands were in the dark too. “On both sides of the spectrum, neither one had really mastered brand deals,” Nino De Guzman, who’s an influencer herself, told Marketing Brew. Nino De Guzman saw an opportunity to change that. Last year, she started working on Clara, a company that she compares to Glassdoor, but for influencers and brands. In January, she quit her job at TikTok to roll out the company and work on it full-time.

How it works: Creators can go on Clara and review brands they’ve worked with, sharing how they were compensated, and how they felt they were treated. It’s similar to F*** You Pay Me (FYPM), another platform that lets influencers divulge details about brand deals. But unlike FYPM, brands can go on Clara and look at reviews, too.

Zoom in

Since its January 2022 debut, more than 13,000 creators have signed up for Clara, according to Nino De Guzman. Jonny Morales, a lifestyle and comedy influencer with more than 3 million TikTok followers, told us that reading reviews of one company on the platform impacted his bottom line.

• Morales told us he worked on a Black Friday influencer campaign with Walmart in 2020. The retailer paid him somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 dollars. When Walmart reached out again for another campaign, this time, Morales had access to Clara.
• “I remember going on the Clara app, just to see if anyone else had worked with them before,” he said. Other influencers on Clara said they’d been paid triple or even quadruple what Walmart had paid Morales. Equipped with that information, and knowing he’d gained a lot of social media followers and upped engagement since the last time he worked with Walmart, he felt more comfortable asking the company for more money.
• Seeing what other people wrote on Clara “helps me feel more comfortable asking for more, even if it’s a brand that I’ve already worked with before,” Morales told us.

Click here to continue reading.—PB

As we covered last week, many brands have stayed silent on the recent Roe v. Wade news.

Refresher: In response to restrictive anti-abortion laws in states like Texas and considering abortion would almost immediately become illegal in most cases in at least 13 states if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, brands including Levi’s, Amazon, Tesla, Citgroup, Yelp, and more have offered to help cover travel expenses for employees accessing out-of-state abortions in some capacity. Others, like OkCupid, Ben & Jerry’s, and Parade, have released more direct statements supporting reproductive rights.

However: Some of the largest companies in the world, like Meta and Google, have yet to comment publicly. And people are paying attention. “Public companies, whether they like it or not, are in the spotlight for this debate,” Carla Bevins, assistant teaching professor of business communication at Carnegie Mellon University, told CNBC.

Companies don’t always make these decisions in a vacuum: PR agency Zeno—a subset of Edelman that reps brands like Netflix and Coca-Cola—advised clients to “not take a stance you cannot reverse, especially when the decision is not final,” per an internal email seen by newsletter Popular Information.

Speaking of agencies: On Friday, WPP CEO Mark Read told employees via email that the holding company is updating health-care benefits at US agencies to include “‘consistent access to health care and resources,’ including abortion care,” Ad Age reported.

+1: At a CNBC event last week, Stacey Abrams said companies shouldn’t comment on political issues just for the sake of speaking out. “Performative value means nothing to me,” Abrams said. “It shouldn’t be performing values because you think that’s what people want to see from you.” For companies that do opt to take a public stance, she said that decision “should be because you can’t meet your own moral compass, can’t be respectful of your own moral core.”—PB and MS

There’s been a lot written about Gen Z. Depending on who you ask, they’re “more pragmatic about love and sex,” the “loneliest generation,” “leaving brands on read,”…even “too compliant to achieve greatness.”

They’re not a monolith, but marketers are constantly trying to better understand them.

And these charts can help: Compiled by Retail Brew, they highlight Gen Z’s favorite e-comm sites, time spent on TikTok, how many of them shop secondhand, and more. Check them out here.

+1: For other Gen Z news, read this Retail Brew article on how they’re reshaping retail product design. Or this HR Brew piece on a nonprofit called Gen-Z for Change that’s exposing hiring-portal weaknesses at companies like Kroger and Starbucks.—MS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Collabs: Find out how to use Instagram’s Collab feature for a much-needed reach increase.

Trends: Here’s what you need to know about retail media networks.

The Book: Meta is removing a slew of location-based features from Facebook this month.

Sharing it all upfront: As our digital world continues to evolve, the world of upfronts could be evolving this year, too. Need more deets? We dive deep into what you can expect from upfronts in 2022 in our latest article. Read it here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Is it Monday already? Need a change of scenery? Be sure to explore 200+ job openings on the Marketing Brew Job Board!

Today’s featured openings:

• Product Marketing Manager - Trust & Safety at TikTok
• Email Marketing Manager at Rhone
• Associate, Brand Partner at Morning Brew

See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.

Finally, something that can cure “excessive study mania” and “over brainwork,” “etc. etc.” Too bad it’s an 1890 UK ad and not something we found on the bodega shelves this morning.

Micro-influencer, macro-influencer, meso-influencer, nano-influencer? These days, you’ve gotta catch ’em all. Influencer marketing is booming, and certain brands are cultivating truly impressive creator communities. Among them is Logitech, whose Global CMO, Najoh Tita-Reid, is joining us on May 11 in NYC for a conversation, sponsored by #paid, on the current state of influencer marketing. Free to attend and open to director level (and above) marketers. Register here.*

*Note this event has limited capacity.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• With no third-party accredited measurement, this year’s upfront season is a testing bonanza
• How one podcast marketplace is connecting women and non-binary hosts with sponsors
• Why Manscaped is leaning into ads on Tumblr