|
|
|
|
- Heinz partners with vampire influencer
- Meta's Creator Week is back
- YouTube star MrBeast says he doesn't 'really need money'
- Benefit doubles down on brows for its second TikTok campaign
|
|
Great Reads
Stephen Perlstein Of Studio71: The Growing YouTube Podcast Space
Stephen Perlstein is the Senior Vice President of Studio71, a leading global media company for digital-first brands and creators. Studio71 is one of the largest video podcast publishers, with a total of over 100 creator-led shows releasing audio podcasts and corresponding videos on YouTube and other video platforms simultaneously. Some of Studio71’s largest video podcasts include Wild ‘Til 9 with LaurDIY and Jeremy Lewis and The Bald and The Beautiful with Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova.
Stephen shares, “What I do in my day-to-day is focus on bringing in new podcasts to our network, whether that’s brand new ideas for shows with creators and influencers of all kinds, helping them format and shape with my team of producers and editors, or bring in existing shows to kind of help figure out how to expand their businesses.”
Stephen and his team help creators and brands expand their businesses by providing them with additional opportunities, increased monetization, distribution plays, and production and marketing support.
At the beginning of his time with Studio71 four years ago, Stephen shares that Studio71 had about three active podcasts. Stephen was tasked with figuring out how to grow this aspect of the business. Today, they have around 140 active podcasts in their network with creators, influencers, and YouTubers of all niches and backgrounds.
“Every day, what I’m most excited about is helping creators get paid and grow their audience for their awesome creative work in a space that I think sometimes is imperfect at making sure people get paid.”
Keith Bendes, Vice President Of Strategy At Linqia, On Scaling With Influencer Marketing
Keith explains that influencer marketing was very organic five to six years ago. Companies would find influencers, hire them, and the influencers would post on their handles. At this time, many influencers were paid in product or with low fees.
“It’s kind of expanded into more of a creator model [today] where these influencers weren’t just about their reach. They were also about the quality of content they produced. So, brands started paying for this content and the usage of this content in other mediums, and so I think from a scalability perspective, where we’ve gotten to today from a lot of the sophisticated brands is using influencer content and creator content as a funnel for the entire ecosystem.”
Today, brands are using influencer and creator content on eCommerce pages to drive sales and paid social and display advertising. Many brands who produce their content are even mimicking creators by making content that looks like a TikTok or other popular social media form.
Keith shares, “The conversation has shifted from a “What is my ROI in a campaign?” to “What is the total business impact of working with creators?”
When asked about what determines a successful campaign, Keith shares that there are multiple benchmarks they look at, including social conversation, mid-funnel awareness or lower funnel sales, and lifted brand awareness and perception.
|
|
Sponsored
It’s time for holiday micro-influencer campaigns!
minisocial is a fully-managed solution that partners your brand with micro-influencer creators across 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇬🇧 to generate fully-licensed UGC-style content and of course, posts on either IG or TikTok. Brands like UrbanStems, LIVELY, Imperfect Foods, and Hydrant work with mini to produce share-worthy content that they utilize for organic social, ads, email marketing, and everywhere in between!
Submit your brief before the end of October for 15% off, just mention Influence Weekly!
👉 Learn more here, or schedule a free strategy call.
|
|
Campaign Insights
Benefit doubles down on brows for its second TikTok campaign
If you think of brows when you think of Benefit Cosmetics, know that it’s by design. For the second year in a row, the 46-year-old makeup brand has invested in a brow-focused TikTok campaign timed to National Brow Day.
Benefit chose to go bigger for its second TikTok campaign: It seeded products to 2,100 influencers and paid 17 to promote a hashtag challenge. Its focus was creators who consistently post about beauty and have audiences interested in beauty, such as Emmy Combs and Trevor Barrett. From September 15-29, users who showed off their brows and used the hashtag #BenefitOfBrows were entered to win $15,000 and a year’s worth of brow products. Three winners, chosen based on the creativity of the entries, were announced on National Brow Day, October 2. Another 25 TikTokers won a year’s supply of brow products.
“[TikTok as a] platform is still very new in comparison to the other platforms. We looked at TikTok, as this is where a lot of brand and product discovery is happening right now. It’s a priority platform for brand awareness of Benefit and brows specifically,” Whipple said.
ColourPop Drops Collaboration With Beauty Influencer Snitchery
Known as the queen of cosplay herself to over five million followers, Snitchery has teamed up with ColourPop to release her very own collection. As the master of dramatic makeup transformations, the range of highly pigmented products delivers just what you need to enter your own villain era.
On the hunt for the truest black lipstick color, ColourPop and the energetic beauty guru created Female Gaze, a stunning spooky black lip shade, just in time for Halloween. The Divine Feminine and Femme Fatale Lippie Kits offer a fall-ready warm terracotta shade and a deep brick red. Snitchery's jam-packed collection also features an uber-cool holographic lip gloss that can also be used as an eyeshadow or for an extra bit of shine on your brows.
ColourPop's iconic Super Shock Shadow Duos offer a richly saturated sparkling red hue alongside a duo-chrome deep purple in its Magical Girl kit, while Final Girl provides a delicate duo-chrome lavender and silvery mauve.
The collection's standout product is the Lite Stix Highlighter, which immediately transforms any look with its ethereal glow in a cool lilac and teal duo chrome finish.
White House turns to TikTok stars to take Biden's message to a younger audience
When President Biden hosted a celebration with lawmakers on the South Lawn last month to mark the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats' signature spending package, there was an unique group of guests joining them.
More than 20 influencers — content creators with devoted followers on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube — received special invitations.
It's part of a White House strategy to reach younger people where they are — which often is scrolling on a device.
I got a magical email from the digital communications team at the White House saying they were going to be doing essentially a creator briefing for the Inflation Reduction Act, said V Spehar, who hosts Under The Desk News, which provides daily news wraps in about a minute to their 2.7 million TikTok followers.
I thought perhaps it was going to be similar to what we see from legacy media groups who get a press briefing from the press secretary, Spehar said. This was a little bit more intimate than that.
Spehar and the other influencers gathered in the Roosevelt Room ahead of the ceremony and were briefed on the legislation by members of the National Economic Council, the climate policy office and Biden and Vice President Harris themselves.
Honestly, I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, when the president and the vice president walk in the room, it's a cool moment, Spehar said.
Fashion giant, Shein, renews partnership with Chiney K
Chinese fashion giant Shein has renewed its partnership with Jamaican social media influencer, Chiney K.
The urban fashion retailer made the announcement as part of details about its fall campaign, Variety Girl, in which Chiney K has been selected to participate.
Speaking about the partnership, Chiney K, whose real name is Kerry-Ann Collins, shared that she was elated to be working with the fast fashion retailer once more.
“We've been working together since 2017 and it has been a really good experience,” she said.
“In 2017, working with influencers was a relatively new phenomenon, and they were one of the first brands to really embrace this style of marketing. So, for me, they were visionary in this way, and we’ve just continued to build a relationship, which continues to this day and I am happy for that,” she added.
Chiney K shared that her love affair with the retailer, which she personally supports outside of her partnership with them, began while she was in college.
“In the beginning, I used to shop on Shein a lot, because they have cute clothing for an affordable price. I think that's the key thing. You know, at the time, I was in college or just graduated college so, I really did not want to spend a lot of money on expensive clothing,” she said.
Converse continues to target Gen Z with creator-focused brand campaign
Converse is already resonating with Gen Z consumers—but it wants to maintain that relationship and continue to attract new young consumers. To do so, it’s debuting its first brand campaign in four years, “Create Now. Create Next.” The creator-focused work positions the Nike-owned sneaker brand as a teller of individual creator stories.
“This is an opportunity for our brand to continue to talk to Gen Z consumers through the lens of creative expression,” said Sejal Shah Miller, who joined Converse as chief marketing officer last year, noting multiple categories such as music, sports, art and fashion. “We create for Gen Z but we’re also creating with them.”
The campaign has been teased on Converse’s own social platforms as the brand allows customers to discover it organically, but it will officially debut today with paid content on digital channels such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Spotify and YouTube. Videos will run in a variety lengths. In addition, Converse is running out-of-home and transit ads in cities including London, Los Angeles, Berlin and Cape Town.
LSU students and Office of Communications discuss creating content for university TikTok account
The LSU Office of Communications and University Relations has been collaborating with student interns to create TikTok content that showcases campus life and sporting events and provide viewers beyond Baton Rouge with a look at life at LSU.
Mass communication freshman Christian Gladney is a social media intern at LSU that focuses on the TikTok account. One of his most recent videos asking students to respond to questions with only one word gained over 37,000 views.
Gladney said the idea for the one-word interview came from his love for interviews themselves. He said he believes the one-word spin gives it a sense of uniqueness.
“It’s not just a regular interview. It makes it more fun, genuine and original,” he said.
When coming up with questions, he made it a point to make sure they were not usually meant to be answered in one word so the responses wouldn’t be dull and made room for funnier answers.
“I thought it was kind of goofy at first, but once I started coming up with the questions and asking people around me to answer in one word, I thought it would be good for my introductory video,” Gladney said.
|
|
Sponsored
Save the Date for the 5th Influencer Marketing Conference & Expo
The Influencer Marketing Conference & Expo (IMCX) is a series of networking & educational events attended by senior level marketing decision makers from numerous brands, multi-channel networks, Influencer marketing agencies, platforms, social media influencers & others interested or involved in the multi-billion dollar influencer marketing economy.
The 5th edition of IMCX will be held on Dec 8th & 9th 2022 in Miami Florida.
Early Registration starts on October 10th.
For speaker considerations, sponsorship & exhibition information, contact us at info@influencermarketingexpo.com
|
|
Interesting People
Gretchen Scotland Of Someplace Yellow Provides Tweens And Teens With A Safe Space Online
One of Gretchen’s first brand partnerships was with a company publishing a book of stickers. They reached out to her when she had about 12,000 followers on TikTok and offered to send her the sticker book and pay her to make a video featuring the stickers.
The same company contacted her for a repeat partnership with their latest sticker book this year. Both campaigns were highly successful.
Joanne Fabrics also recently reached out to her about a potential collaboration, which she is very excited about.
“It’s really fun to be able to work with these brands and have these adult relationships and connections. I’ve definitely grown a lot in that sense, just in my communication skills and all of these things.”
Growing On Twitch With Tiffany Witcher, The Charity Witch
Tiffany Witcher is a Twitch streamer, FURIA Vtuber, accessibility advocate, award-winning Charity Witch on Twitch, and professional voice actor. She has helped raise over $60,000 on Twitch. She does a charity stream nearly every week and aims to make streaming and gaming more accessible for all.
Tiffany shares, “I decided to become a Vtuber because I suffer from a disease called Lupus. It’s something I strongly advocate and talk about on my stream and do a lot of charities for… My [Vtuber] design is based on Lupus awareness. The color of Lupus is the color purple. The animal for Lupus is the butterfly.”
VTube is a type of content creation where the creator uses a virtual avatar instead of posting content featuring themself. Tiffany shares that the avatar can be a 2D or 3D design.
Tiffany shares, “I started on Twitch because I was bored. My husband was working full time. My son was in school, so I would clean up the place and stuff like that, and I had nothing to do.”
Her best friend suggested she try Twitch because of her charisma and passion for gaming.
“I tried it [Twitch] one day. It was, I believe, the day before my birthday, and then I was like, oh, this is kind of fun. I just kept doing it over and over again as a hobby. Now, I actually do it full-time as a content creator.”
Tiffany continued streaming as a hobby and now does streaming full-time as a content creator.
Her primary content focuses on accessibility reviews of games. Before she begins playing a game live, she will give a review of its accessibility. She also participates in various charity streams, where she helps raise money for different charities and causes close to her heart.
YouTube star MrBeast says he doesn't 'really need money'
Speaking to Graham Stephan, the host of YouTube podcast The Iced Coffee Hour, Donaldson said he reinvests the ad revenue made from his elaborate videos into producing new content, instead of accumulating the earnings in a personal bank account.
I live in the studio right over there so I'm not worried about paying for a mansion. I don't drive a Lamborghini. I'd purposely have a really dumbed-down lifestyle because it gives you freedom, he said.
Donaldson previously said he lives in his filming studio, which is located in his hometown in Greenville, North Carolina
Donaldson continued,I like money because I can hire more people and grow a business but not so I can increase my lifestyle, or whatever, adding that, In the last 20 days I've only left this studio once, I just live here, I don't really need money for other things.
Fashion Influencer Dannie Tayla Shares How She Gained Confidence Online
“My main [niche] has always been fashion and lifestyle, but I think I’ve grown a lot since March. I’ve found my personal style, identity, and what resonates with the people that follow me. I think that was quite tough, just trying to find my own style.”
She adds that as she has grown her audience, she has gained confidence in posting images and reels that may not fit the beauty standard.
She has also learned to love how she looks without using an excessive amount of filters or Facetune. When she started posting content, she was afraid to share more ‘real’ content, but now she embraces herself and her personal style.
Embracing her love for what she does was a critical step in this process.
“I got quite a lot of negative feedback when I first started creating content from people that I knew in my day-to-day life, like friends, family, things like that… People [in real life] are opinionated as well as random followers online. So, it was a bit hard because I’m quite an anxious person.”
Dannie Tayla shares that her anxiety would lead her to ruminate about worst-case scenarios and embarrassing things that could result from posting content online.
“It took me quite a while to gain confidence, but as soon as I started telling myself I’m doing it for myself and the other people, that’s where it got a lot easier, and I started not to let the negative feedback really affect me.”
Now, she uses her platform to discuss things that matter to her and to lift up other influencers with support and kind words.
|
|
Industry News
TikTok chases Amazon with plans for U.S. fulfillment centers
TikTok is planning to build its own product fulfillment centers in the U.S., creating an e-commerce supply chain system that could directly challenge Amazon, as indicated by more than a dozen new job openings posted in the past two weeks to LinkedIn.
Why it matters: The move signifies TikTok's commitment to e-commerce as its next major revenue stream, following the explosive growth of its ads business.
By providing warehousing, delivery, and customer service returns, our mission is to help sellers improve their operational capability and efficiency, provide buyers a satisfying shopping experience and ensure fast and sustainable growth of TikTok Shop, the company wrote in one job listing.
Details: According to the job postings, TikTok is looking to build an international e-commerce fulfillment system that will include international warehousing, customs clearings and supply chain systems that support domestic e-commerce efforts in the U.S. and cross-border e-commerce efforts. The systems will eventually perform parcel consolidation, along with transporting goods from one stage to the next and managing free returns.
Meta's Creator Week is back—and promises 7 days of "Reels-spiring" events
In June 2021, Meta-slash-Instagram hosted the first Creator Week, a three-day, invite-only professional development program for content creators.
Now Creator Week is back for a second go-round—and this time, it’s an actual full week, with virtual programming available for anyone who wants it.
This year’s Creator Week will run from Nov. 1 through Nov. 7, with in-person, invite-only events in Los Angeles, Bali, São Paulo, London, and Delhi. The available-to-everyone virtual programming, meanwhile, will be posted to Instagram’s official @creators account and to the Meta for Creators hub on Facebook.
“We’re committed to helping creators grow their community and make a living across our platforms,” Meta tells Tubefilter. “As we work toward the metaverse, our investments aim to empower creators with the cutting-edge tools, education, and resources needed to build creative and financial success—now and in the future.”
Instagram, TikTok teen addiction lawsuits grouped in northern California
More than 80 cases alleging that TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and other social media sites are designed to hook young users – even at the cost of their physical and mental health – will be grouped for pretrial proceedings in federal court in Oakland, California, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ruled Thursday.
The panel opted for industrywide multidistrict litigation (MDL) for the lawsuits, even though 70 percent of the cases so far name only Meta Platforms’ Facebook or Instagram as defendants.
Meta supported plaintiff Brianna Murden’s motion to create the MDL. The parent companies of Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube vehemently opposed it, arguing that their services operate differently from Meta’s and that a “behemoth, industrywide MDL” would be unmanageable.
The panel, however, identified several overlapping areas, including allegations of “indivisible injuries from multiple products,” and the companies' likely common defenses – particularly that they are shielded from liability by the Communications Decency Act and the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
TikTok adds new editing tools to adjust clips, sounds, images and text
TikTok is introducing new editing tools to give users more creative freedom with their content, the company announced on Thursday. The new tools allow users to easily adjust clips, sounds, images and text. The changes announced today are now available to users in the U.S. and most regions globally, TikTok says.
With the new tools, users will be able to stack, trim and split video clips. You can also speed up or slow down the pace of video clips. It’s already pretty simple to edit and post videos on TikTok, but these new tools give creators more ways to play around with their content and make it more intuitive. In addition to the new video tools, TikTok is also adding new tools for sounds, as users can now cut, trim and set the duration for sounds they use in the videos. You can also now add sound effects. Sounds play a big part of videos on TikTok and are often the basis for many trends, so it’s not surprising that TikTok is giving users more ways to incorporate sound into their content.
TikTok is also giving users the ability to more easily edit, position and set the duration for text. Another new feature lets users add photos and video overlays for picture-in-picture or video-in-video stacking. Last, you can now rotate or zoom in and out of frames of individual clips.
Allegedly Leaked Bank Records Filed in OnlyFans-Meta Bribe Suit
The main allegation of the case accuses OnlyFans of bribing certain Meta employees to add the site’s porn industry rivals to global databases used by internet companies to identify and mitigate threats. Websites and other content included in these repositories are often suppressed on social media with AI. These databases allegedly included ThreatExchange, an API-based platform launched by Meta in 2015 to share “details about malware and phishing attacks,” and another founded by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), a partnership between Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube aimed at preventing the spread of terrorist and violent extremist content.
According to the complaint, this resulted in a “substantial and dramatic” impact on the internet traffic of adult entertainment providers unaffiliated with OnlyFans, resulting in account takedowns and reduced visibility for entertainers that significantly reduced click-throughs on social media. Entertainers who exclusively promoted OnlyFans, meanwhile, and none of its rivals, were “unaffected by these automated takedowns and reduced traffic,” the complaint says.
|
|
Registration Required
Great Paywalled Content
TikTok Parent ByteDance Sees Losses Swell in Push for Growth - WSJ
TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. saw its operating losses more than triple last year to above $7 billion as it spent heavily to continue its torrid growth, according to a financial report shared with employees that offers a rare look inside the private company’s closely guarded finances.
ByteDance also produced an operating profit in the first quarter of 2022, the report showed, indicating one of the world’s most valuable startups could be turning a corner after years of incurring large losses.
As a private company based in Beijing, ByteDance has closely guarded its finances and doesn’t publicly disclose results. The report—sent to employees in August and that covers the full years for 2020 and 2021 as well as the first quarter of 2022—provides one of the most detailed looks at how it is performing and is planning for the future.
The report shows a company rapidly increasing its revenues, accumulating a massive war chest of cash and other investments, but with net results weighed down by tens of billions of dollars in unrealized market losses on convertible securities.
Heinz partners with vampire influencer to promote 'Tomato Blood' ketchup - Ad Age
Plenty of brands have worked with influencers for social media campaigns, but few can say they’ve partnered with a 280-year-old vegetarian vampire. In the latest campaign from Heinz, the condiment brand does exactly that.
To promote the relaunch of its “Tomato Blood” packaging, a limited-edition design timed with Halloween, Heinz worked with Wieden+Kennedy New York to create a fictional vegetarian vampire who prefers the taste of Tomato Blood to actual blood. Heinz tapped actual influencer E.J. Marcus, who has almost 400,000 followers on TikTok, to play the vampire character known as “Toby the Vegetarian Vampire.”
Throughout October, people can follow along with Toby’s adventures and his passion for Tomato Blood on Heinz’s Instagram and TikTok accounts. So far, Heinz has posted four TikTok videos featuring Toby, including one of him going on a “hot veggie vamp walk”—a parody of the “hot girl walk” trend on the platform—with a bottle of Tomato Blood. Another follows Toby on a visit to Six Flags, where he orders a bowl of the amusement park’s limited-edition “Bloody Nacho Fries,” but asks for all of the ingredients besides Tomato Blood to be removed.
|
|
💬 Become an Influence Insider
This is your link to share Influence Weekly with colleagues: https://sparklp.co/8323887e
If you refer 3 people to start reading this newsletter you'll get an invite to a Telegram group for Influence Insiders.
If you have the swipe up feature on IG stories, share this link
https://sparklp.co/8323887e
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
