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- Everything We Know About Instagram’s Live Producer Tool
- OnlyFans' CEO sets the record straight
- Beyoncé Joins TikTok
- VidCon 2022 Takeaways for Creators and Influencers
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Great Reads
Everything We Know About Instagram’s Live Producer Tool
In July 2022, Instagram announced the launch of Live Producer, a tool that allows users to live stream their content through their desktop. Using conventional third-party software such as OBS or Streamlabs, influencers can now implement a range of new features into their streams.
Like other live streams, Live Producer allows users to add multiple camera views, external microphones, and graphic overlays. Previously, influencers could only conduct live streams via their smartphones and then broadcast the stream on their feed.
Although it is still in its initial stages of development, Live Producer hopes to help Instagram improve its stance in the live streaming industry. The simple collection of features means that even novices can find success with the new tool.
Currently, Live Producer is still in its Beta phase and is only available to a small selection of users. These individuals were sent an exclusive invite as well as instructions on how to use the new feature. Instagram is hoping to extend this feature further if it is successful among the chosen influencers.
A lot of these chosen creators were also Instagram Partners. This means that they have access to a brand account and can manage advertisements on their platform. Therefore, these people are regarded as experts in business growth and social media marketing.
OnlyFans' CEO Amrapali Gan sets the record straight
In August last year, one of the biggest trending stories in the world was that controversial social media platform OnlyFans would be banning explicit content. In the weeks that followed, OnlyFans backtracked on their decision and founder and CEO Tim Stokely stepped down. The phone of his successor Amrapali Gan would not stop blowing up.
"To the outside world it was this unknown woman coming in to run one of the biggest tech businesses," Gan said in conversation at GQ Heroes 2022. “It was an incredible learning experience in the power of our community. Our creator's voices were heard and we’re proud that adult content creators have a safe place to be able to connect with their fans.”
No other social media platform is at the intersection of so many conversations going on in 2022 quite like OnlyFans. Whether it is the debate about people – and in particular women – having control of their own image, or the ways that social media and commerce are becoming ever-intertwined, OnlyFans sits at the centre of it all. What the subscription-based social media platforms offers in the way that following a Kardashian on Instagram does not, is the chance for fans to have a true connection with a creator by putting their money where their mouth is.
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Campaign Insights
Walgreens partners with TikTok's The Old Gays to reach senior consumers
Walgreens has partnered with influencers The Old Gays—four openly gay TikTok personalities in their 60s and 70s, known for their dancing and comedic videos.
In the TikTok video, posted as a paid partnership on their TikTok page, Jessay Martin, Robert Reeves and Mick Peterson learn about the MyWalgreens App and the digital tools accessed through it, including the 24/7 Pharmacy Chat, Save-a-Trip refills and 90-day prescriptions, while searching for their friend Bill Lyons. “Is it easy to use for old gays like us?” Robert inquired.
Bill, too, had discovered 90-day refills through the Walgreens App, with help from a handsome delivery man.
The video, created by WPP, also features Loza Theodros, a Walgreens pharmacist at an HIV-specialized pharmacy in Los Angeles, who informs the four friends about the app’s services. Like The Old Gays, whose TikTok following totals nearly 8 million, Theodros has accumulated a social media following, with over 22,000 Instagram followers.
Nudestix turns its beauty influencers into investors
As the influencer marketing industry matures, the way brands and influencers work together has evolved. At the forefront of this evolution is Nudestix, the makeup brand known for its portable, stick-format products. The brand recently announced two influencers as not just ongoing partners and ambassadors, but also as investors: 19-year-old Olivia Ponton and 30-year-old Stephanie Valentine, aka Glamzilla.
The brand has labeled these deals as a CSOP, or celebrity stock option plan. Essentially, in exchange for equity in the company, they are now “perma-influencers” for the brand, agreeing to post about the brand regularly throughout 2022 and at least into 2023. “There are certain deliverables that are put in place contractually. However, because Olivia and Stephanie are extremely business-minded, they really do have a vested interest in the growth of the business,” said Taylor Frankel, co-founder of Nudestix.
Nine-year-old Nudestix did not disclose how much equity Ponton and Valentine were granted. Ponton and Valentine are not the only well-known personas to have such a deal with Nudestix. Celebrity makeup artist Mary Phillips also has equity in the brand, and Hilary Duff is a traditional investor. And though celebrities have long amassed investment portfolios, influencers doing the same is indicative of the ways their roles have shifted: They’ve become increasingly important revenue drivers for brands and as culture has fully accepted them as a new class of celebrities.
Meet the Lobbyist Next Door
At First Glance, the posts appeared to have nothing in common. A Philadelphia-area attorney who proffers financial advice urged her 1,700 Twitter followers to sign up for a credit union. A 23-year-old climate activist in Texas rallied her 49,000 fans on TikTok and Instagram to join a mailing list promoting Democrats in statewide offices. A physical therapist for the elderly in Florida prodded her 3,900 Instagram followers to sign a petition demanding that Congress pass paid medical leave, sharing the story of her grandmother’s battle with dementia. Each of these posts was funded by a well-heeled advocacy organization: the Credit Union National Association, the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, and UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Action.
Even though none of the people reading these posts knew it, however, they were all made possible by the same company: Urban Legend, a small ad-tech startup operating out of a loft in Alexandria, Virginia.
Launched in 2020 by a pair of former Trump administration staffers, Urban Legend pledges on its website to “help brands run accountable and impactful influencer campaigns.” Its more comprehensive mission, one rarely articulated in public, is slightly more ambitious.
Staffed by a plucky 14-person team, Urban Legend keeps its largest asset carefully hidden away inside its servers: an army of 700 social media influencers who command varying degrees of allegiance from audiences that collectively number in the tens of millions. The company has painstakingly cultivated this roster to reflect every conceivable niche of society reflected on the internet: makeup artists, Nascar drivers, home improvement gurus, teachers, doulas, Real Housewives stars, mommy bloggers, NFL quarterbacks, Olympians, and the occasional Fox News pundit.
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Interesting People
Michelle Phan on the Intersection of Gaming, Crypto and Shopping
“When I first started [uploading videos] in 2007, there was no industry — it was still very much the wild, wild West. There were just a handful of creators that existed back then on YouTube, and there weren’t any brands that had a presence on YouTube,” said Phan.
Around 2014, what Phan refers to as the “creator economy” began to take hold, fueling the rise of influencer marketing as brands began tapping user-generated content as a means to relate to consumers via experiences that seemed less manufactured.
According to Phan, the more recent rise of concepts like tokenization and Web 3.0 will fundamentally change not just the relationships brands have with consumers, but those between content creators and their audiences, creators and social platforms and even those between creators and their own content.
“The evolution of the creator space that I can see in the future is that creators are going to own their relationship with their viewers and followers,” Phan said. “They’re probably going to own it through some sort of tokenization, whether it’s on a blockchain or through a game — it’s going to be different than what we know of today, where I still have to rely on the platform to show my content for me to go on there and connect with my viewers."
Glossier’s new CEO on why she’s backing influencers, ending the DTC era and opening stores
A long-time wholesale holdout and darling of direct-to-consumer, Glossier plans to enter into retail partnerships soon, though Leahy declined to say with who or give a timeline. More stores are planned too, in Washington DC, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Brooklyn by the end of 2022 and a new store in New York’s Soho neighbourhood in 2023, replacing the original store, which shut due to the pandemic. The brand, who hired its first celebrity ambassador, Olivia Rodrigo, earlier this year in a surprise pivot away from its typical community-led marketing approach, will continue to use the high-profile influencer to reach young clients. And, new marketing efforts are on the cards too, including shoppable videos on YouTube Shorts to promote new products like the No. 1 pencil, which enlisted 100 beauty creators to create unique looks with the eye pencil.
“Through our own retail experiences and broader omnichannel strategy, our goal is the same: bring Glossier to more people,” Leahy tells Vogue Business via her home in Boston, Massachusetts. “We’re taking a strategic and intentional approach to our retail stores; knowing we can’t be everywhere all at once, we're choosing locations where we have an existing community of customers and an opportunity to expand on that.” The end of the DTC approach may shock some, but Leahy’s thinking is that retail stores are “just one channel and one touchpoint for our customers, among many that we need to deliver on”.
Beyoncé Joins TikTok, Bringing Full Music Catalog to App
Queen Bey is now on TikTok.
Pop superstar Beyoncé has joined the short-form video app (link) — and her entire catalog is now available to TikTok users to use as backing sounds for their creations. The songs include her new single, “Break My Soul,” and hits like “Halo” and “Single Ladies.”
Beyoncé just posted her first TikTok, a compilation of creative user-generated content inspired by her music and persona, thanking all her fans on the platform for supporting her and promising big things to come.
“Seeing y’all release the wiggle made me so happy!” Beyoncé writes in the caption. “Thank you so much for all the love for BREAK MY SOUL! – Love B”
Beyoncé already has garnered more than 3.3 million followers on TikTok as of Thursday morning.
Sarah Boyd, President Of Lytehouse Agency on Influencer Marketing & Changes in the Marketplace
Sarah Boyd has been in the PR and marketing industry for almost 20 years, originally starting her career in fashion PR in Los Angeles. In 2012, she created her business, Simply, an agency that specializes in brand collaborations and events. With Simply, Sarah created large-scale conferences worldwide.
After a few years at Simply, Sarah Boyd had celebrity-level talent approaching her asking if Simply’s team could help them with their social media platforms and monetization. In response, Sarah created the Simply Digital Network to offer monetization and partnership services for influencers and celebrities.
In 2017, Simply was acquired by Socialyte, a talent agency that manages top-tier influencers and celebrity talent. Sarah was recently named President of Socialyte and Lytehouse, a full-service influencer marketing agency and sister to Socialyte.
She shares, “It’s been really exciting to see the growth. We’ve got an incredible team and incredible roster of talent and incredible brands that we work with on the Lytehouse side. We do essentially all things influencer marketing on the Socialyte side. We have a roster of about 130 influencers that we manage, ranging from lifestyle all the way up to celebrity level.”
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Industry News
Instagram launches its creator marketplace on an invite-only basis
Instagram has officially started testing its new creator marketplace, a hub designed to help brands discover and reach out to creators about partnerships and campaigns. The marketplace is currently available on an invite-only basis to brands in the United States.
Brands that are invited to access the marketplace can use the desktop experience within Meta Business Suite to filter creators by gender, age, number of followers and interests. Brands can also filter for creators based on the demographics of their engaged audience, such as gender, age, interests, country and city. In addition, companies will be able to see creators who have expressed interest in working with them via an “interested creators” tab. They can also see creators who have tagged them or follow them via a “tags and follows” tab. Brands can also see similar creators to those they’ve already discovered through the filters. They can then add creators to saved lists.
Once brands have discovered creators that they’d like to partner with, they can use the marketplace to create campaigns and share them with creators. They can then provide creators with information about the campaign, such as the desired deliverables and compensation. Messages sent to creators will appear in a newly created “Partnerships Messages inbox.” Creators can respond to brands and coordinate with them directly within the Instagram app via DMs.
VidCon 2022 Takeaways for Creators and Influencers
Content Creator Vs. Entrepreneur
Takeaway from + my thoughts inspired by: The TikTok Blueprint: Knowing Your For You Feed. Panelists: Kristine Thompson TT: @trendycurvy, Kyne TT @onlinekyne, Owen Han TT: @owen.han
All content creators are, by definition, entrepreneurs–that is, if they want to make money at content creation. By the same token, all entrepreneurs are content creators, by definition, if they want distribution. Whether entrepreneurs create content on Instagram or an SEO-friendly blog on their websites, it’s still content creation with the goal of targeted attention. This means that we are all in it together in one sense, and fighting each other for that attention in another. The good news is, content consumers are consuming a LOT of content. The even better news is, many of the creators successful enough to land them on stage at VidCon said they started just 1-2 years (sometimes months) prior but, of course, they were creating content on a platform that had a lot more consumers than creators (TikTok). This really shows what is possible when that’s the case. Below, you’ll find some options for current content starved places and things to keep an eye on (Thanks VidCon)!
Repurposing content is key to both productivity and staying sane
Takeaway from + my thoughts inspired by: Get the Most from Your Post: Powerful Content Bundles by Crystal Lambert (Technical Writer, Google) & Kaya Marriott (Content Creator, Comfygirlcurls)
Content repurposing is key. One example from VidCon was Kaya Marriott who uses a full length YouTube video + an edited transcription to create a blog and then pulls clips or shoots clips and images at the same time as the YouTube video for other visual platforms. This means she can spend one day of shooting to produce weeks or more of content for multiple platforms (even Pinterest!). Marriott was discussing this process from the perspective of brand deals but this strategy can also be used by entrepreneurs to “be everywhere” without having to create nonstop and also really systematize content production.
TikTok Starts Layoffs in Company-Wide Restructuring
TikTok has begun a global restructuring of its business that includes layoffs, according to five people with knowledge of the process.
The short-form video app, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has rapidly expanded both its user base and workforce in recent years. Despite tensions with the Trump administration over fears it could be a tool of China’s government, TikTok crossed 1 billion monthly active users in September and now has thousands of employees worldwide. Its rapid growth and success with younger users inspired Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube to launch competing short-form video products.
But on Monday morning, some employees based in Europe were informed that their jobs were at risk and told to expect invitations to meet with human resources staff in coming weeks, according to sources at the company. Some UK employees were warned that job losses will occur in a number of departments within TikTok. When US-based employees began work hours later, some were informed their roles were being eliminated.
The restructuring announced internally today includes layoffs and the closing of some vacant roles, one staff member said, and affects TikTok’s businesses in the US, EU, and UK. Plans to expand some teams inside the company have been put on hold.
Snapchat just invested in an influencer-focused resale platform
Like other existing thrifting apps, Galaxy allows people to create stores on its platform — but rather than displaying photos of an individual’s items, stores will feature videos of the seller showcasing each product. According to the Business of Fashion, the video-focused model is inspired by China’s livestream commerce, where influencer-hosted streams draw in sales from their online communities and fans. Online retailer The Lobby also uses video content from influencers as the main media on its website.
Galaxy’s business model blends shopping and entertainment, “making the experience of the resale more enjoyable,” founders Danny Quick, Nathan McCartney, and Brandon Brisbon told BOF. Like Instagram and TikTok, Galaxy sellers can go live on the app, encouraging users that have tuned in to purchase their pieces in real time. Sellers can also upload pre-recorded videos showcasing their products.
Acast acquires podcast database Podchaser
Acast, the Swedish tech company that helps businesses and individuals publish and monetize podcasts, has announced plans to acquire podcast database Podchaser.
The deal initially values Podchaser at $27.2 million, though this could rise by a further $6.8 million if Podchaser meets certain “performance conditions.”
Founded out of Stockholm in 2014, Acast is a prominent brand in the podcast technology space, serving as a host and distribution platform that allows outlets including The Guardian and The Economist to publish their podcasts to pretty much any app, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Acast also allows podcasters to dynamically insert advertisements into their shows.
The company has raised some $126 million in its eight-year history, while it has at least two previous acquisitions to its name, including RadioPublic, which it bought last year.
Podchaser, for its part, was founded out of Oklahoma in 2016, and closed a $4 million Series A round of funding last year. Podchaser is like an IMDb for podcasts, allowing users to search for everything and anything to do with podcasts, including reading and posting reviews and filtering by category.
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Registration Required
Great Paywalled Content
Five brands winning at TikTok | Business - The Sunday Times
Online fashion giant Asos’s “Generation Z” customer base is directly in the TikTok demographic. It has skilfully deployed influencers with big followings on the site to promote its designs through video clips featuring them prominently. Asos is a past master at celeb endorsement on Instagram, but was quick to twig that TikTok followers have younger idols. Celebrities and influencers’ behind-the-scenes videos are particularly effective.
A 25-second backstage video of an Asos fashion shoot featuring former Love Island star Millie Court got the brand 500,000 TikTok views. Another video teasing a shoot with actor Lucien Laviscount for the brand’s collaboration with Adidas gained more than 300,000, and videos of Asos staff giving viewers a peak into the company’s headquarters regularly hit six figures.
ANA sets influencer marketing measurement guidelines - Ad Age
The country’s foremost marketer organization has issued its first guidelines for measuring influencer marketing, looking to create common ground for assessing the effectiveness of a fast-growing channel with widely disparate and confusing practices. The ANA is introducing the guidelines today at its Digital and Social Media Conference taking place through July 20 in Carlsbad, California, and available virtually.
The 12-page document offers standard definitions for awareness, engagement and conversion measurements attributed to influencers. It includes standard definitions for reach, cost per reach, cost per engagement and cost per conversion.
But a common marketer toolbox will likely prove challenging. For example, the guideline document details how each of the eight major social platforms for influencers—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter and Youtube—defines engagement differently. One platform considers a video auto-playing in feed as engagement, while another only counts such actions as likes, comments or shares.
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