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- Inside Paula’s Choice’s first TikTok campaign
- Lightricks Onboards the D’Amelio Family as Equity Partners
- Vending machine YouTubers are rolling in cash (and candy)
- TikTok expands max video length to 10 minutes
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Great Reads
LinkedIn debuts its own podcast network
LinkedIn is delving deeper into the podcast world. It's debuting a podcast network that features in-house shows from the LinkedIn News team as well as programs from industry figures.
The shows, unsurprisingly, are geared toward a professional audience. They focus on areas including understanding tech, managing mental health and explaining the hiring process. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, will co-host a podcast about personal entrepreneurship called The Start-Up of You that will premiere this spring.
The company says the LinkedIn Podcast Network is a pilot and builds on the success of Hello Monday, a podcast produced by LinkedIn News in which host Jessi Hempel delves into the evolving nature of work. The shows are ad-supported and the initial sponsor is Verizon, Engadget's former parent company.
The podcast network ties into LinkedIn's other products — such as newsletters, live events, videos and posts — with the idea that hosts and audiences will be able to keep conversations going outside of the shows. Listeners will be able to check out the podcasts on LinkedIn directly if they follow the hosts and subscribe to their newsletters. The shows will also be available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast platforms..
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Campaign Insights
Inside Paula’s Choice’s first TikTok campaign
Paula’s Choice developed a six-week TikTok brand awareness campaign that was based on the idea of debunking skin-care myths and used the hashtag #BeautyBeginsWithTruth. Paula’s Choice worked with six dermatologists for the myth-busting portion of the campaign and gifted products to 1,500 influencers. It also hired an additional 18 content creators in the beauty and lifestyle space to create videos around the topic of skin-care information they wish they had learned earlier.
“This was really cementing what the brand was [on the platform] and being part of TikTok for the long term,” said Erika Kussmann, CMO and gm of Paula’s Choice. “We’d received buzz, but we felt like there was more [potential]. We looked at impressions and views as our key targets because it was about getting the brand in front of more people.”
Paula’s Choice set a benchmark of 29.7 million views and reached 43.6 million. Influencer gifting drove 8.5 million unpaid impressions and $963,000 in earned media value, while the brand’s TikTok account during the period gained over 6,600 followers — it now has over 36,000. Influencer marketing agency Fanbytes worked on the #BeautyBeginsWithTruth campaign, including by devising the creative and influencer strategies before executing the campaign on TikTok. It simultaneously ran paid media in the form of TikTok Spark Ads.
KFC, TikTok Creator Isaiah Garza to Provide $500K in Grants to Nonprofits Fighting Hunger
Kentucky Fried Chicken and TikTok creator Isaiah Garza have teamed up to launch the #KentuckyFriedGivingChallenge, a grant fund that will give away $500,000 in cash grants to nonprofits fighting hunger in communities across the U.S. via TikTok.
Similar to its very own Colonel Sanders, who believed in never passing anybody up and once gave a hitchhiker who happened to be a college student a ride and a full scholarship, KFC was inspired by TikTok’s Creator Fund and philanthropic creators like Isaiah, best known for spreading positivity and changing lives through random acts of kindness on TikTok, to create the unique grant program.
“TikTok has become an influential platform for creators with a passion for philanthropy. That passion is precisely what inspired us to create the #KentuckyFriedGivingChallenge, the first-ever grant program on
TikTok benefiting nonprofits,” says Nick Chavez, chief marketing officer, KFC U.S. “We are excited to give creators with a cause an opportunity to shine a light on those working to end hunger in their communities.”
Lightricks Onboards the D’Amelio Family as Equity Partners
A far cry from traditional influencer marketing models, whereby brands pay content creators to promote their products with one-off sponsored posts on social media, in this case, the D’Amelios have secured an equity stake in the $1.8 billion company, which recently raised a Series D round of $130 million in September 2021. It’s an unusual move for the social media tech space, but the practice is well-established in the music and movie industries, so there is exciting potential.
This collaboration in particular makes sense because of the strength of both brands and how their audiences tie together. Lightricks is the company behind many of the most popular apps for creators, such as Facetune, Filtertune and Videoleap. As they’ve grown, they’ve added more apps to their ecosystem and now can legitimately claim to be the most complete set of tools for creators who wish to monetize their efforts.
The D’Amelio family are perhaps the best examples of creators who’ve built gigantic audiences in the past two years, simply by having their finger to the pulse of what people want.
The numbers on both sides of the equation are impressive. Lightricks exploded during the pandemic, with 42% growth in app installs in the 12 months leading up to September 2021, bringing their total to well over 500 million. Active monthly users stand at close to 30 million people. They have set themselves a revenue growth target of 40% in the year leading up to September 2022. Backed by investors like Hanaco Investment Ventures and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, they have a war chest to use acquisitions to help fuel these ambitions.
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Interesting People
Vending machine YouTubers are rolling in cash (and candy)
Generally, vending machines are owned or franchised by individuals who then agree to terms with business owners to place them on a property. The property owner usually takes a cut from any sales made through the vending machine, with the remainder left for the machine owner.
Ibanez decided he wanted to be that machine owner. So six months after graduation, he took his savings and bought a second-hand combo vending machine — it sells both snacks and drinks in a single unit — for around $4,000. The machine, by U.S. manufacturer Withern, was already on location in a nursing home — a boon, he says, because it meant he made money from day one.
“Back then there weren’t really many videos about the vending industry, or much information about it,” says Ibanez. So in January 2019, the young entrepreneur set up a YouTube channel documenting his vending machine adventures in the hope that it would educate those who came after him.
It grew quickly — almost as quickly as his actual business. Within three or four months he had gained 100,000 subscribers. It’s now at 479,000 subscribers, and his videos have been watched 57.5 million times. He’s one of a number of vending machine YouTubers who have sprung up, bringing audiences along with them as they fill machines with snacks and empty them of spare change.
Today, Ibanez services around 30 vending machines across North Texas that earn him $10,000 to $12,000 a month. But advertising revenue from his YouTube videos can earn him almost as much — between $5,000 and $10,000 a month, depending on how often he posts.
Dominican-American Influencer Lands Deal To Get Her Natural Hair Products in Sephora
Dominican-American influencer Carolina Contreras has been building a solid following through her blog Miss Rizos and her series of natural hair salons, and now she’s secured a partnership that will take her brand to the next level.
The Miss Rizos founder and CEO is set to debut her new line of products designed for curly and Afro-textured hair as part of Sephora’s 2022 Accelerate brand incubator program.
She launched the blog in 2011 to highlight the beauty of curls, coils, and Afro-Latina culture.
Her inspiration came when she moved back to the Dominican Republic, where she was born, to research her roots within the Dominican diaspora and how that relates to her Blackness. Not an openly embraced topic within Dominican culture, Contreras knew she was treading into rough terrain by highlighting African history and influence within Afro-Latina culture.
Her two-month trip to DR turned into a 10-year adventure of her confronting issues of colorism within her own culture. One day while she was at the beach sunbathing, two professors approached her and told her not to tan so much or else she’d get too dark.
Why Michelle Phan Left YouTube, and Her Even Bigger Comeback
After Michelle Phan appeared on the cover of Forbes’ 30 under 30 list, founded two companies and made $60,000 a month from YouTube, she took an unannounced leave from the internet. Her leave was so abrupt that some fans speculated she had died, and even some of her professional colleagues had no clue as to her whereabouts.
Phan first appeared on YouTube in 2017, and her videos quickly went viral. Videos like “Barbie Transformation Tutorial” and “Lady Gaga Bad Romance Look” accrued tens of millions of views and established her as a recognizable name. Later, she moved more into everyday beauty tutorials and asserted herself as one of YouTube’s best creators. Phan was at the height of her success — so why did she leave?
It turns out that Phan was traveling the world while trying to really figure out who she was beyond the money, the views and the constant pressure of the internet. She returned ever so briefly to post a self-illustrated video titled “Why I Left,” which discussed her exponential rise to fame and subsequent personal burnout. In it, she shared personal stories including how her father left her family (due to a gambling addiction) when she was only 6 years old.
Influencer Marketing With Diana And CK Of Hypefoodies
One of Diana and CK’s favorite experiences have been Fortune House, a small business in Burt, Virginia. Fortune House has been open for over 20 years and was used to seeing the same customers.
Diana and CK made two videos on Fortune House on a whim because they genuinely enjoyed the food. These videos had around 100,000 views between Instagram and TikTok. Within a day, Fortune House was already having new customers coming in.
When Hypefoodies made a video about Fortune House, the owners immediately saw many new faces. On their second visit to Fortune House, Diana and CK were thanked and treated like the owners’ own children, which was a special experience for them.
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Industry News
TikTok expands max video length to 10 minutes, up from 3 minutes
TikTok is starting to roll out the ability for users to upload videos up to 10 minutes in length, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The official launch comes as Tiktok has been testing the change over the past several months. Previously, TikTok videos could be up to 3 minutes in length following a change in July 2021. Before that, the limit was 60 seconds after initially expanding from 15 seconds.
“We’re always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience. Last year, we introduced longer videos, giving our community more time to create and be entertained on TikTok,” a spokesperson from TikTok said in a statement. “Today, we’re excited to start rolling out the ability to upload videos that are up to 10 minutes, which we hope would unleash even more creative possibilities for our creators around the world.”
The expanded video length will give creators more time and flexibility when filming things like cooking demos, beauty tutorials, educational content, comedic sketches and more. Prior to the new video length, creators had worked around TikTok limitations by encouraging viewers to follow them for part 2 or more of their video series. Although this works sometimes, it can be frustrating for users to have to scroll through a creator’s feed to find the right video in a series.
UK music platform for creators Uppbeat raises $6.15 million Series A
U.K.-based music platform Uppbeat has been developing a service that makes it easier for content creators to find quality free music to use in their videos published to platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and others. Now with more than 500,000 users on board, the startup is announcing the close of its £4.6 million GBP ($6.15 million USD) Series A funding round to help further grow its business.
Uppbeat was developed by Lewis Foster and Matt Russell, the U.K.-based co-founders of another music-licensing company, Music Vine. The founders realized there was an opportunity to put their expertise to work to address the growing need to offer a free music resource for the creator space. Today, over 100 million people share content across social platforms, but there weren’t that many great options for free, but high-quality, music the founders believed.
First launched in January 2021, Uppbeat helps to eliminate the headaches that come with copyright claims on music used within creator content. It does so by offering an alternative to expensive music licensing platforms as well as free music options like YouTube’s Audio Library or Creative Commons‘ music.
Leveraging a freemium model, Uppbeat allows creators to sign up for an account that provides access to around 50% of the site’s catalog and provides 10 downloads per month. The Premium subscription ($6.99/mo) provides full access and unlimited downloads (a three-year and lifetime subscription is also available).
Web3 Creator Company DNABlock Raises $7M
DNABlock, a company specializing in tools for Web3 creators, has raised $7 million in a second seed funding round led by Sfermion, Solana Ventures, Animoca Brands and Non-Fungible Labs.
The funding round comes after DNABlock raised $1.2 million in September for its 3D avatar technology, called “Replikant,” that allows creators to design and mint NFTs of realistic avatars. As part of the latest funding round, Scott Broock, formerly a VR executive at YouTube and the evp of digital strategy at the NBCUniversal-owned animation studio Illumination (Despicable Me, Sing) has joined DNABlock as a chief strategy officer. DNABlock will also launch a creator studio in LA for talent in the NFT space.
“We want people to feel something when they see their characters and NFTs come to life through Replikant,” DNABlock co-founder and CEO Anthony Kelani said in a statement. “I’m particularly excited that this will surface a new generation of stars from a much more diverse roster of creatives than we’ve seen from legacy media.”
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Great Paywalled Content
How Influencers Are Making Money on YouTube, TikTok Filming at Work - Business Insider
Morgan Eckroth first stumbled upon TikTok fame while working as a barista at a small coffee shop in Corvallis, Oregon back in 2019.
Out of boredom, she began posting close-ups shots of herself pouring latte designs and delivering short comedic sketches about dealing with customers from behind the register.
TikTok was just a fun project, she thought, when she graduated from Oregon State University as a marketing major and left for a social-media role at a startup.
But by then her account @MorganDrinksCoffee had millions of followers (it now has over 5 million) who missed her coffee shop videos. After being approached by a talent firm for a management deal, Eckroth began taking her role as coffee influencer more seriously.
Within four months she quit her startup job and was back behind the counter.
"Previously, so many of my videos revolved around me actively being a barista and actively working in a café," she said. "It felt a little disingenuous to go back to that sort of thing without actually working in the industry. And so I found a wonderful café up in Portland that was looking for a part-time barista, and to this day, I still work three shifts a week."
How Do You Say ‘Kardashian’ in Italian? - The New York Times
When Chiara Ferragni joined the board of the Italian luxury brand Tod’s, the company’s stock rose 12 percent. Ms. Ferragni is a 34-year-old mother of two with more than 26 million followers on Instagram, and one of the world’s most famous fashion influencers, particularly in Europe. Her businesses include a clothing brand and a talent agency.
Not bad for a former fashion blogger still sometimes known as “the Blonde Salad” — though few people still use the word “blogger.” If they do, it is usually a mistake. What they likely mean is “influencer” or “creator.”
These words are essentially the same, though — just adopted at different moments in recent history. They are all people who make content online professionally while drawing from their own lives: their outfits, their engagements, their sponsored vacations, their passion for cryptocurrency. Twenty years ago, this content was published on platforms like WordPress, and its reach was difficult to quantify. Now it’s largely on TikTok, where the metrics, including likes, comments and shares, are much more accessible.
At Revolve’s First Store, Anyone Can Be an Influencer - Business of Fashion
After nearly a decade of banking on influencers to spread the word of its fashion and help sell a certain lifestyle, Revolve is opening its aspirational world up to anyone — regardless of their follower count.
In early March, the brand is opening Revolve Social Club, a space in Los Angeles that will include a lounge, cafe, bar, Instagram-bait photo walls and the company’s first retail store where Revolve-exclusive brands like Song of Style and Camila Coelho will be sold alongside labels like Levi’s and Free People.
The online retailer’s past real-world events and pop-ups were aimed at celebrities and fashion influencers, with the goal of flooding social media with flattering content. The strategy has worked, even as Revolve pivoted from its laser focus on party dresses and festival attire to more diverse offerings during the pandemic. The company reported fourth-quarter and full-year results Wednesday, bringing in $891 million in net sales in 2021, up from $600 million in 2019. Net income was $99.8 million in 2021, compared to $35.6 million in 2019.
But many online retailers and brands are seeing the limits of online marketing; even Revolve can only get so much out of sending another planeload of influencers to the Maldives.
“Of course, there will be a number of influencers constantly promoting,” Michael Mente, co-chief executive of Revolve told BoF. “But giving the consumer the experience of the VIP … is the evolution of where we’re going.”
The pop-up is an update to a member’s-only club Revolve ran from 2016 to 2019 in LA. Mente said the company has signed a three-month lease for the space, which will be on West Hollywood’s Melrose Avenue, but anticipates the club will have a longer run.
“Revolve’s influencer mission has propelled them, but it is also restricting,” said Jessica Ramirez, a retail research analyst at Jane Hali & Associates. “Its big festivals and events are only catered to influencers, so it’s aspirational but there isn’t much to participate with.”
Not that Revolve will leave its influencer community behind completely. The new space will include a second floor, with a gym and wellness centre that is members-only. The company will also host its Coachella-timed festival this year for influencers and celebrities in Palm Springs, after pausing the event for two years.
Revolve anticipates the new social club will generate hype for the brand, but the end goal is to get visitors shopping too. At the cafe, for example, coffee and pastries are complimentary with fashion purchases.
“Providing the stage for her to wear the clothes … the cafe for her to brunch in is ultimately a bigger priority for us than racks of clothes within the store,” said Mente. “Ultimately, these are the type of things that drives sales back to the website.”
How Emira D'Spain Grew Her TikTok, Attracted Victoria's Secret - Business Insider
The year Emira D'Spain spent studying in Paris changed everything.
It was 2015. She was a first-year student at New York University's French campus and found herself experimenting with makeup and dressing in feminine and masculine styles. D'Spain attended fashion shows and documented her style transformation on Instagram and accumulated a following that tops 70,000 today.
D'Spain focused more on fashion and beauty upon her return to the US and is known today for posting makeup tutorials on TikTok, where she has 780,000 followers. Her account recently caught the attention of Victoria's Secret, which signed the 25-year-old to a contract, making her the first Black trans woman to model for the lingerie giant.
"The brand is shifting their ideas," she said. "They're bringing people who, previously, they said did not reflect the brand's values, and now they're welcoming us with open arms." (Victoria's Secret did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.)
D'Spain's rise speaks to the increasing power digital influencers wield these days as companies lean on them to help with their rebranding and attract Gen Z consumers. More than 80% of people ages 13 to 38 want to become influencers, according to a 2019 report from Morning Consult, and top TikTok stars, such as Charli D'Amelio, are outearning some S&P 500 CEOs.
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