Building an Influencer Revenue Channel with Aspire and CeraVe

Understanding Your Brand

0:00really understand your brand. Who does your brand resonate with? If you can't tell that story about your brand and get passionate about what your brand is and what it means to people, how can you expect an influencer to bottle that and express it to their audience, right? And that that translates through detailed briefing, allowing space for some magic as well. But you've got to be the representation or the bottled representation of that feeling, that energy behind your branding. Start from

Setting Campaign Goals

0:20like who do you want to be in 6 months from now. And like in this campaign, like what do you want to be able to go to your investors, your boss, your whoever and say you did at the end of it and then I like to work backwards from there. Like do we want to get written up in glossy? Do we want to have the most sales? Like do we want to like keep steady conversion? I don't know. I think start from like what you want at the end of what you're trying to accomplish cuz influencer and all of its faculties can do kind of anything and it's just sort of like up to you to pick. Obviously, we see who you guys are

Roles and Responsibilities

0:54on the side, but I I like to ask this question a little bit, but we know what your title says, but what do you actually do? That's where I want to go. So, I'll start with love curving going here to John. Yeah, I do a lot of things. I think I wear a lot of hats in this world like we all do. I think in general, my job is to figure out cool things we want to do and who we want to do them with and then execute it hopefully really, really well so I can tell my boss we like did cool things.

1:20but I think it's setting cool

Cool Factor in Marketing

1:22objectives at the top. Like not just performance metrics that are meaningful to your bottom line, but also things that make me feel like what we did was wellreceived by customers and by publications and by my colleagues. I like when my colleagues, even outside of my industry, feel jealous of the work I came up with. and that's that kind of chasing the cool factor. John, yeah, I lead the sales team over at Aspire. or an a toz influencer platform alongside managed services. But

Influencer Best Practices

1:52I think for the context of this room is I have dozens of conversations with brands not unlike you guys asking me for best practices asking me for what's working in the influencer space basically raising a white flag and saying what can I do next that isn't redundant right now. So that's a question I have to answer basically every day. And this is a question that would be going on like even you go to the creator that you use was like Michael Sarah like that was the wildest creative. It made total [ __ ] sense.

2:20Do anybody know what I'm talking about? Their creator with Michael Sarah. This was this was last year. This was a Super Bowl ad that was like wild. Can you just walk me through how that started? How was that? And first off, how was did we get to activate that on digital as much as you wanted to do? Oh my gosh. Okay. set was a really really really cool ad that I'll tell you I was not a part of.

2:39So I'm like really sorry. Can we get that person on here please? I'm just like yeah 100%. I'm just so sorry. It's actually part of why I wanted to join the team though because Sarah does amazing work like that. I think that one of the hallmarks of the places I go and I think was also true of that ad is like where is there a cool idea and then from that how do we keep like building on the cool idea. So, and that's definitely the conversations I've heard around that was like really how do we continue to show up unexpectedly. You know, I don't know that like the product is necessarily like an unexpected product and that's why we show up so unexpectedly. And I think Michael Sarah was really fun. I think it was also a little bit of at the time celebrity, you know, lines coming out a lot and I think it was a little bit of a like not here. were like legit were coming from dermatologists, not no offense to him, but like not like

3:32Brad Pitt's like bathroom. So, I think that that was also a little bit of the insight that came to life there. but yeah, I was not part of that unfortunately. Do do you think for that's a that's a really large bet on a on on an influencer for lack of a better phrase. He had no credibility in the space. He's loved by most people. Is that something you're like, "Yeah, most people should be thinking about, especially on some of the some of these events." Always be thinking about the audience associated with the creative personality that you're putting in place always. What What are the attributes of the audience that you're trying to resonate with most? And that's where I saw I think we saw a lot of that alignment. The sort of aloof, playful, the guys from Superbad, they're all aged up at this point. So, you know, skincare is all all of a sudden a thing, you know. Do you think that because that rise because there's this conversation around influencers starting products and

4:24they've already built this audience and then all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, Mr. Beast, I'm going to just going to sell chocolate and fake Lunchables or I'm going to sell really bad sugary drinks as a Logan brothers." But they never necessarily that brand alignment is forced. There's like, "Hey, like I have somebody that will buy something." When you're thinking about like the growth of influencer marketing at various sizes, how are you educating brands on thinking about this [ __ ] you want to go first? yeah. I mean,

Authenticity in Influencer Marketing

4:50I think for me, one of the things I really think about is longevity in partnerships and authenticity at being at the heart of it. So, I mean, coming from like an existing brand side, we really look for people who genuinely love and talk about our product from the from the jump. So, not like coming in cold. and I think that for me, sometimes when a brand starts from a cold place as like the recipient of that, it feels really not normal or good. And it's like there's like a trust thing there too. So for me, those types of brands don't make sense when they don't make sense. Like there's a creator I follow whose husband, Pia Veronchini, it's a great follow. but her husband is Italian and they are always cooking and it became like a series and they started an olive oil brand and it's like that makes a lot of sense to me.

5:38They were constantly bringing back like these like just like jugs of olive oil from their trips to Italy and so it made sense. But yeah, I don't know if like a chocolate bar because you like are like people eat chocolate is like a thing for me. and I think that that's kind of as a marketer I think about authenticity. So it's like as a brand creator you should be thinking about it too. Like does this make sense? Yeah.

5:59Yeah. And to add to that I I would say continuity is a huge part of it too. Like brand continuity, personality continuity between the actual creator and the brand itself. I I don't know if we we show enough appreciation to the fact that it stops people in their tracks when there is no continuity whatsoever between the creator and the brand that they're all of a sudden propagating stops everyone and it look what that lack of authenticity immediately you're just like ew like how do I get here this is weird now I'm being sold to by somebody that I've invested in for sometimes years and you've digested their content and you've been a fan you've liked shared you like know and trust them or no I can trust them. All of a sudden, it's like, "Try my toothpaste." And we're like, "Yeah, you're sold out." You know what I mean? That's the that's the terminology for it. Well, that's the hardest part like on our creator side is because we're we have a very unique

6:49product and we have a unique brand alignment and we know we have to be with them for ongoing activations. Like we need them to be posting and we need to be tracking ongoing. And I think my first question is for you guys is when you're going to recruit set of creators, not brand ambassadors. I'm like, you are a creator. You're not my ambassador. You're creating for me. I need you to be linking and tagging because I need to actually show to the boss how much revenue I'm driving from it. Can you thought start me through the initial creation or like the ideation of who we want and then the go live moment into the reporting side? It's a long question, but I want to hear all of it and I'm like trying to like capture all of the elements of this. I mean, I think the first thing for me is when you're saying you're not an ambassador, you're a creator. For me, I think that like the word influencer keeps shifting and changing, but at the end of the day, it

7:39really means like people that you want to promote your brand and influence people to purchase from. And I think in that way, it's just really important that everyone in a way has an ambassador like heart. So, I think from even selecting people like I don't pick randos. I spend a lot of time like my phone I have it set to like seven hours a day on social. I'm locked out by like 8 am. Like I'm like embarrassingly locked out. So I spend a lot of time manually combing through and like finding people who I feel like feel natural to the brand. Sort of what you were just saying and what we we were talking about this a little last night. I call this like the inception effect that like people can kind of feel when it's forced and they're like get out of my like place. And so for me that's like kind of how I start. And so everyone that I'm selecting to work with overwhelmingly know it's like 90% sometimes you get a filler but like for

8:32the most part everyone really has to feel like they and then from there I think it's about giving those people the space to talk the way that they want to because that's why you liked them and selected them in the first place. And I sometimes find myself in rooms where we're like really excited about an idea and like phase one and tier two and this is how we'll but it kind of doesn't take into account the partner on the other side of the wall or on the other side of the phone and like that's the whole value and why we're paying them. So I think open briefs is really important to me regardless of like who you are. what's a must in the brief that you're like non-negotiable. You have to do this. How do you pronounce a brand name which is Sarah V. It's okay. but like I've had that at a lot of brands actually that I've worked for where then like they can't get the brand name right and I'm like come on guys, we can do

9:25this. Like it's all I need, you know? So, yeah, the brand name correct is important. I've worked in beauty for a really long time. And I think also like application feels important to me. you'd be surprised how easy you think like applying lotion is for example and it's like it's not apparently. Sometimes you're like, "That was a lot, Robin, for like your hands." Like you're like, "That's a lot." But yeah, I think though at the end of the day, like I probably put on too much face cream and it's like if I were an influencer, that would be my hallmark. So just like let me be me. Like Yeah. and then I think

Reporting and Metrics

10:02for reporting, one of the things that's interesting and I feel really excited about in this field is that there's not really I don't really know that I think there's any one right way to report on the performance of your campaign. Obviously, there are things that are important to your leadership that I think you should report on so they keep trusting you and feel excited about the work you're doing and keep investing in what you're doing. But I also think that there are a lot of things that are hard to report on. A lot of our tools are, you know, a little behind what is future facing. They're reporting what was like cool and important six months ago, a year ago. So, I kind of like to save space and pick out something that feels like a secondary metric, like cool factor. and I like to report on that, too. So, you have your classic stuff like engagement, click-through rate, or, you know, cost per click, that kind of thing. And I partner with my

10:47media team really closely to make sure that our content's effective and media placement, but I also like to save a little space for like magic and things that can't be measured. Cool. John, you see a lot of brands trying to build out that program? Yeah. Yeah, I do. all the time. And I think, you know, a lot of alignment with everything Kirby's saying here, obviously, but I think I think the the one thing that we always have to be cognizant of is the the wow

Leveraging Human Connection

11:12factor, the magic factor is all about leveraging the human connection as much as possible. And that that that that takes shape in how you reach out to creators. You're not standing you're not sending out spray and prey messaging that's just like, "Join my campaign. You're awesome. Represent my jewelry line." Like, say something interesting. You're investing in these people. You have to show that you're investing in the partnership because you need them to be invested in the partnership just as much as you are. And that level of authenticity starts with you, not with them and their audience. Like you have to show them the way in a lot of that.

11:43and then providing them with a framework, especially if you're going traditional influencer, which is sort of like not so cute anymore. This is like a professional real performance marketing channel. My my whole history is seven years in performance marketing. Now I'm an influencer. There's a reason for that. You know what I mean? and so on that note, when you start talking, Kirby has a lot of feelings. She has a lot of emotions. And she's like, I want to report on the things that are secondary, tertiary, and emotionally based. Y, I would be fired so [ __ ] fast if I said, well, the impressions were great. And like, cool, how much money did I just spend on that creator?

12:20When you're talking to them, like there is a performance element that has to be driven to it. How do you get someone like Kirby or other people that are similar in the sense going, "Okay, but how can I report on this? How can I make sure that I can tell? So when the CEO and the CMO jump on the line and say, "Show me the money. How many dollars do I give you and how many million?" So this Yeah, this is always a very interesting conversation. It always starts with what are you doing top of funnel? Explain to me what you're doing top of funnel. How are you generating interest? What are those creatives like?

12:45Is that sufficient creative to run through paid as well? Are you leveraging high performance creatives or content in your paid channels? Is any of that happening? Because if no, then we need to start at square one. This is a this is a zero to one build. This is not a give John a bunch of creative direction or sign up with the on the SAS platform or sign a managed services agreement. This is like we now need to educate you and show you how to take advantage of this ecosystem before it starts delivering for you. Well, because a lot of people think influencers doesn't live in the performance or revenue driving category, right? So like we have our influencer, we have our paid media and we have a retention, right? But when in reality like the influencer is just like this all the way through now and more so than ever because I have to run whitelisting through all of our accounts and if we aren't running whitelisting then we're losing a way more expensive

Whitelisting and Trust

13:30CPMs. Everyone familiar with whitelisting. Okay, this is the room for it. Thank you. So, so if I don't have that like my CPMs are done. We're even in more of a unique space where like if I don't run through whitelisting I I will lose pages and accounts because of THC CBD. So, I have to have creators that are on brand, consistent, and more importantly, super trustworthy. How do you get people over this? Because whitelisting, believe it or not, is pretty new to some people that don't get this creator has been with us. We trust them and now I actually want them to potentially be a percentage of spend bonus, right? Is this the new wave that's coming? Because I think it is. I think it's still some new 100%. Yeah, it is. I mean, like I said, the influencer space not so cute anymore. It's it's a professional channel and so you also have to educate influencers in terms of what that means. So if this is ne negotiations upfront so if you're going

14:19to get that content in perpetuity which is usually what we can get through Aspire it depends if it's like nano level it's easier you go up to mid macro define the numbers please. for us we say nano is somewhere between like 1,000 5,000 followers you can go all the way up to macro which is you know 5 million plus maybe 250k to five or to a to a million somewhere around there. Okay. It's different for every platform because there are backend metrics that you're looking at engagement across that audience as well. So the definitions are pretty loose and we're not saying that like that's important like macro do not.

14:50It's like content. No, it's not. You're looking for the signals across every single influence. So you're looking for the audience engagement. You're looking for historical campaign work. You're looking for brand alignment. You're looking for the magic, right? You're making sure they even know your brand. At least they can pronounce your brand, right? That's a good start as we cover. Yeah, that's important. Maybe in the first like five to six seconds is also great when that happens. and repeatedly. Yeah. Okay. But I think I think if you're going if you're going traditional influencer into sort of the affiliate space, meaning you're offering them a revshare model, saying you post this and you can take x amount of your conversions, you have to show them how that work. You have to train them. Like I lead a sales team, right? So I can't say here's your quota. I have to say here's your quota and here's how you can get there. Here's how you can beat it.

15:33So you got to do the same thing for these influencers. give them the framework to succeed and be like, "Yeah, I know you're used to upfront payments. You're obviously used to product and that's still relevant." But if you really want to move forward with this thing and turn your life or your life into a business, these this is the framework you can follow to do that. And I think the influencers are going to get hit the hardest with the tariffs. No one's talking about this. We need to be caring for our creators, guys. We really need to bring them under our wings. I say that partially joking and partially being serious. Here's why. Because you have a lot of brands that believe that giving product to creators is like just enough. And especially if you want them creating ongoing repeated content almost like they're on retainer as if you would hire a designer or editor. That's how we believe creators are. They should be ongoing creating non-stop. But if they for make a banger of an ad or an

16:22incredible organic piece of content, they're not going to get the lift that they think they're going to get ongoing unless I and my team are running behind their account. Mhm. So, they need to be open to like, look, I want I want to have this ongoing posts. I want to make sure that you're paying me a percentage of the overall spend for this ad that allows everybody to win. And now they're getting paid residuals on a thing that they created maybe months ago because as we as most of us know, any piece of creative that's going to hit, it's like oneif of the time it's going to stay for more than a month. And so that way it never stops. Yeah. And you can you can actually tier it out. So you can have your your startup tier, which is X percentage of sales generated by that creator, and if you hit a certain revenue threshold, you graduate to a new tier with a higher percentage point on that rev share. Nice. So that's that's a

17:06piece of that model that I'm saying you need to try and educate your creators on. Like once they start seeing that and then you can do a little napkin math for them and be like, here's what you're earning on 50 conversions, here's 150, here's 200, and then here's where you graduate. They're like, oh okay, I can make x amount of dollars across the year by doing this thing. This is a business now, right? I will say the Tik Tok has given us like that Tik Tok creators has brought this a lot further than most people because now they're understanding I can make money I can continue to post and I say I say creators because it's not an influencer that's as important as it once was. I think there are marquee moments to do that but it's more so how many people that hit the different types of demographics that you're trying to sell into. So, one of the final questions before I open it up to the audience is how frequent across your quarter or

17:50maybe even the month that you're trying to hit different segments of who might buy the product and are you separating it maybe by product? Yeah, we're definitely separating it by product and that's been true for like every company and brand I've worked on. we're definitely separating it by product and we have our heroes and then we also have our secondaries. But one of

Surprising Product Success

18:11the things for me is that I like to sometimes let those secondary products have their moment too and be surprised by what people are interested in. I think we've seen a lot of like bangers come out of that things like Clinique Black Honey. There's like a lot of dudes in the audience, but Clinique Black Honey was a really popular lipstick with Clinique that was like went away. Nobody cared about it. And then one girl on TikTok was like this is it. And then they were like selling out. Couldn't keep it in stock. had a total renaissance and were like blowing like money out of the water with this. Sales were crazy. So Stanley, I think, is another good example of it. Like be prepared to be surprised and don't get like stuck in this idea that this product is for this person, you know? it's a good reminder because sometimes you're like, "This is our hero. Just run that." 100%. When I was at Stvekin, I'm excited to tell you this magical story that also has money in it. when I

19:01was at Striveton, we had a creator who was constantly talking about one of our secondary products that just really wasn't important to our bottom line or really to our marketing team in a lot of ways. our product team and she was like flirting with us and organic DMs and my social media manager was like, "At this point, we should just put your face on this box." And I was like, "Okay, but like let's do it." So, I went to like stickermyface.org and made her face and like had a lot of jokes. She loves cottage cheese. So, we had this like picture of her eating cottage cheese heinously like on the bottle and sent it to her and we're like, "We love you. More to come." And she was dying.

19:35Posted about it. that month we had something like 25K and incremental sales on Shop My Shelf with her. That's what's up. Which is like amazing. We love money. And then it's pretty magical that money. And then Sephora called us which was really exciting because we weren't necessarily a preferred product with them and they were like, "What is this product? We need it." like the buyers were thirsty for it, which was really exciting. And then they self-reported to us about 100K in incremental sales yearon year, which is like we love that. See, that's the special part about knowing and being in the culture. Like that that shit's magical 100%. And money print. We love magic is in fact money. But what was really exciting about that too was that I think it helped like reinvigorate some of the faith and influencer with our team. And we kept getting a lot of questions in like boardrooms like why didn't we do this for one of our hero products? I'm like, "Guys, it wouldn't

20:25have worked because it just wasn't like it can't come from us. It has to come from the board." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I'm like, "This isn't going to work on that." So, anyway, so I think for me like that that is the work that I love to do and that's like how you really can drive sales. Like be flexible enough to like hop into like a little bit of lightning in a bottle. you have to have your always on stuff going too. You can't just like close your eyes and forget. But I like to leave space for those moments because I find them to be the most impactful and powerful across a lot of different KPIs. I love that. I have one final question for you before. What do you think is like the the final advice I'd give for people that are either building their influencer program or wanting to do kind of like the next level in it?

21:06Like zero to one. I would say zero to one and then we're established 1 to 10. Oh man. I mean establish like like first of all like really understand your brand like really understand your brand. Who

Understanding Brand Resonance

21:18does it who does your brand resonate with? If you can't tell that story about your brand and get passionate about what your brand is and what it means to people, how can you expect an influencer to bottle that and express it to their audience, right? And that that translates through detailed briefing, allowing space for some magic as well. But you've got to be the representation or the bottled representation of that that that feeling that that energy behind your brand. got to be able to clearly communicate that to influencers so that they can catch that and and put their own spin on it as well.

Setting Campaign Goals

21:47I mean, I think just start like honestly like sometimes I feel like we get really bad paralysis analysis in this space because there's so much you can do. I think just like do something. and I think also start from like who do you want to be in six months from now and like in this campaign like what do you want to be able to go to your investors, your boss, your whoever and say you did at the end of it and then I like to work backwards from there. Like do we want to get written up in glossy? Do we want to have the most sales? Like do we want to like keep steady conversion? I don't know. I think start from like what you want at the end and what you're trying to accomplish because influencer and all of its faculties can do kind of anything and it's just sort of like up to you to pick. Thank you both. Round of applause for these two real quick. Any any questions on creators, influencers,

22:36program builds? Right away, good eyes. Hi. Hi. How's it going? So my

Influencer Contracts and Performance

22:43question is about when you find the influencers that you want to work with that are on brand, are you doing contracts with them? Like it it it's not cute like you're saying, but you're saying like you have to post about us a certain amount of times. Your posts have to stay up 30 days before you take them down. Yeah, we are. So we overindex on performance and even Sarah. So Sarah's my program runner to the point where she was like, "Relax." She's like, "We can't track everything. We do need magic. I understand that. But because we're such a heavy performance team and we do so much of our revenue through paid ads, it's a like we know we run them like our designers. I need this much pieces of creative. It has to have this much with product in front." And we're pretty explicit because these people are kind of aloof and they think that they more or less they're they take this job serious, but they want to be artists around this. And so you have to give

23:41them some sort of areas that they need to execute within. So I I believe that it needs to be like a range, but there's a minimum and there's a maximum of all creator posts as well as like access to how long we can run this for if they want to actually be compensated over time. I think so. I'm I'm in the beauty industry and I give out a lot of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's sometimes I just hope they use it and get seen using it.

24:04It's not even a contract thing, you know. I I and I I feel like in the beauty industry and it's sometimes in the apparel industry, it's going to be like that. But what's difficult is you don't if the expectation and it's always been this expectation is like you're just going to keep sending me product and if I post I post. And it sucks because now that's that's real money. Like that's there's dollars in that we have like line items of saying how much gifting or happiness budget we can give. There's a point where like that doesn't that actually doesn't make sense to do this. And now you have tiers of creators where like I hope this level of someone that has this much following shares and posts about us. Cool. But then there's the other ones where you're like I need assets. I need images. I need videos of this product in use. And that's it's like an you got to be a little bit more ruthless for sure.

24:51especially when you get the rights in perpetuity for the content because you might strike gold on a random piece of content there that you can then turn into a paid ads component immediately and now you're getting crazy ROI on a low lowv value investment and so then the the content the content creator doesn't own it even though it's their face their message and yep and that can be baked into the contract so it's really really important I would I would also say contractual agreements set the benchmark set the tone for the partnership and say these are the baseline expectations if they're not met, you save a lot of time. Moving on.

25:26I mean, this is sort of residual cutesy phase stuff, right? This is a professional industry and we got to represent it accordingly. Something we've done in my past lives too is that if we see someone, it sounds like you're doing a lot of sampling and seating. If we see someone organically or even just unpaid using a product that we love the asset, you can go in and negotiate rights afterwards and pay them kind of after you've seen the asset. And that's sort of a nice way if you're feeling like you're not getting good traction on your seating and sampling, maybe start like paying some of the people when you see it in real life. You don't have to do this like upfront contracting always. You can kind of be in it. And I think that's a nice way to capture authenticity too. And we've seen those ads perform really really well for us and paid. and I think also going back to like what are you trying to accomplish? If you're trying to use this content as like a

26:12content factory, that type of contract will look really different than more of like an open brief creator-led story that's more about awareness. So, you might have like three to five different contract templates going based on what you're trying to accomplish in a given time period or campaign. That's super good. Going to go front and then right behind you to Colobe. I kind of want to Can you hear me? Yeah, I kind of want

AI in Influencer Marketing

26:41you to guys to pull on the thread that Nick started with with the role that AI is going to play in influencer marketing. I really want to see what you guys think about will AI replace human creators. are you guys using it now? I love this conversation. Let's go. The real question. Yeah. Like we we covered this briefly last night. We have interesting opinions. My my opinion is like it's kind of Yo, don't give me like a real Don't [ __ ] vanilla corporate talk. Give me I think Okay, right now it's for [ __ ] Right now it's horshit.

27:13I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I just don't see the human toachine parody taking place. We we've called up this component of magic several times at this point. That that is a human element. navigating the the relationship between a creator and the audience and then you and the creator that's all human. so the day when here's one of the problems with AI generated influencers is you can you can run that at scale which means at volume.

27:38Yeah. And at volume it always comes at at the cost of quality. Always no matter what and in sales like when you spray and pay spray and pray email is a good example of that, right? The quality is gone. The connection's gone. That's where I see this AI thing right now with AI influencers. Secondly, and this could be a plus, they don't eat. They don't travel. They're always awake. They're always available. So, it could easily fall in a new direction. You know what I mean? This is AI. Like, it's powerful stuff. Magic Woman. Yeah, I think I it will only go by that now. It's my government name is Magic. I really think it could be a powerful tool for things like retargeting ads or something like that where you're already not doing a lot of like magical work and you can feature a person and it's a little bit like a person and it's a little bit easier. I think in terms of like I mean like I feel like you're not cool if you have to

28:31say you're cool. Like the cool kids don't say they're cool. And the whole reason that you want influencers or creators, UGC people is because they're giving validity to your kind of proposal that like we're the brand you want to use and these people are saying it. So if AI is coming from yourself as a brand, I don't think it's going to capture what you need it to capture, which is the authenticity, the valid the val validity, the validating like what you're saying. If it's coming out of influencers, I think it might start looking like a different story. and I think there's a way to use it as like people fe people feature in a way because it is such a m literal machine.

29:03And that's where I think it could be like a retargeting ad. Like if you're on thesaurus.com, maybe it's a cool place. But in terms of like, you know what I mean? But like in terms of like an actual story and like allow listing and that kind of thing, I don't see it there yet. Or maybe ever. All right, I'll take the opposite side. so what when you're getting an app and you're like, "Oh, whoa. Like, who's this person selling me this [ __ ] thing?"

29:29And you buy it. Do you care if that person's real or not? You don't know them. You You don't know them. They hit your feed. You got 30 seconds. They convince you. I buy the drink. I did. I'm done. Now, you find out after the fact that person was not real. Do you feel any different about the product that you just bought? Do I like the product after I got it? That's a good question. That's a good question. So, say it's a quality product. You have someone, you have an AI making this ad and you're like, "Oh, I'm convinced. This is great. My neck is so much stronger. Iron Neck, you know, all of a sudden I feel it." Or if it's a real person trying to sell you on magic and you're like, "Wow, that looks so real." I don't think it cares. I don't think we care. Yeah. So there's okay so we're looking at AI from a content creation perspective but there's also meta andromeda right now which is looking at the downstream effects of

30:15content variables and optimizing audience placements based on those variables correct so there could be attributes of buckets of creatives like background sure colors u whatever it could be anything you could imagine right so AI is effectively optimizing the audience that way instead of us trying to optimize the creative for the audience so targeting geo targeting, demographic targeting, that's all kind of out the window at this point. Now it's all like if you can put thousands of piece of pieces of creatives out there and drama is going to recognize the components and pieces that it sees traditionally offering up those downstream performance that feedback loop performance feedback loop conversions, CPMs, CTRs, whatever you're looking for, it'll start serving that for you. So I guess I'll take it back.

31:00AI is a very good thing in this case, you know, it's not not necessarily for the content creation piece. I I tend to agree with the way you see it too. Is it on still is it on still this thought, sir? Is it on this thought still or news thought? Are we still on AI or a different Okay, Kobe, I'll get you right after. Is it different? Okay, go. I think it's a big difference between like higher higher here. Yeah, here you go.

31:24Deep go. I I think it's like you have the influencer and you trust influencer. Maybe it's a micro or it's a macro. Micro macro. So you have a small or bigger. But then when you do the advertising, I think it's a a different beast. Meaning like if you're influencer, I trust you. I follow you. I like your magic and then maybe I will going to get this. But then if I see an ad and it's AI creation and the product comes in and I love the product, I don't care. I mean that's my opinion. I don't know. It's an ecosystem. I feel like it there's a place for it. So, I don't think we should be like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't want any of that." I think there's a reason for this. I'll tell you what, it's so expensive to advertise on any of these platforms. If I'm I don't necessarily want to go pay another 15,000, 20,000 of creator fees. I rather get something looks as close as I can.

32:13She's still going to be a blonde. She's still going to have blue eyes. She's still going to speak the way I want her to speak. And then I want to run those ads. And then I save my budget for the Michael Sarah of the world and actually drop real budgets on real magic. How about that? You want and a production cost go like shrinking when you do the ad you know I know I mean the influencer is going to be there they trust but then you shrink the cost of production. Yeah I see of the ad. Yeah. So with our data at Aspire we know that it takes somewhere between 10 and 13 impressions for influencer generator or UGC to actually result in a conversion. So, I suppose you could do the math on that and substitute AI influencers for two, three, four of those impressions. And maybe I don't know. I I haven't seen data on this, but yeah, that's where I would experiment with it for sure. I think there's data on that. That's

33:04that's the issue is like it's so new, but it's still so interesting because I know if any of you guys were able to get something of an AI creator as close as possible to an brand avatar, you do it because of the cost because we all need it. It's a it's a it's a squeeze that we're getting everywhere else. If I need if I know I can't turn my ads off, I do need volume, I do need creative, I probably will want to go here. And also, I love the recycling that we're doing today. Like you have somebody's talking about the products. Now you convert that in an ad and then you convert that in a I don't know steady ad or website email.

33:38Yes, we recycle so much today with that you know the content creator and you know brands. I think that was clever. Great point. Thank you Colobby. Yeah. is this home? It is. Kirby, you

Planning for Media Coverage

33:50said something interesting at the end talking about like alternative objectives to influencers. So, like getting written up in glossy or something like that. Is that something you can consciously plan for and like tactically execute or does that just kind of happen as you're doing it? It was always a plan, no matter what. I think sometimes I I think it depends. Like I mean, I know that sounds wishwash, but like I don't know. So, I really just try to leave a little bit of space for like where things could go and be cool. but I like I read I I don't know if you're like a curious person and you read a lot of different things, it gives me ideas of where oh, like my work would fit in here, my work would be cool here.

34:29For example, when like Be Real came out, does anybody remember the RIP? Yeah, I know. Does anybody remember that moment in time? but when Be Real came out, some brands started using it. I think it was Taco Bell started using it for discount codes for their like most loyal consumers. And then that was getting written up about in a lot of different ways because it was a really unique way to use a new platform that had like almost no other commercial value. And so to me, that's an example of like just the way my mind works when there's newness. I'm curious and I like to test and play and be like playful in those places. And if I'm not going to get value for views, engagement, cost per clicks, whatever, what other value is there? And so that's how I kind of like to think about it. What can I bring home out of that? And so that's a great example. I think Taco Bell was written up like a gajillion times for the way

35:17they were using Be Real. And it's like it's just cool to be winning in that like in a professional way, if not in a in a consumer purchasing way. Colobby, what we found on this because we did this activation with Jake Paul for his boxing event and we got TMZ to pick up some of our our in real life blowup drinks and we we were looking at like a list of people how how many of these people are getting active mentions in media ongoing and we're like well that's a that's a huge moment we probably should be there.

35:48South by Southwest huge moment. Coachella has happened. Stage go. So you start seeing some of these creators are like, you know, they're probably gonna be there. You know, they're already going to be in the frame of creating. They might get written up. They might be able to amplify because there's a moment. That's when you start realizing there might be some benefit followrough that they get from from a PR standpoint, but you it's kind of like your influencer person has to be pretty dialed in of like who we who's on our hit list, what are the events coming up.

36:13And so it's pretty integrated overall, but that's how you get the the glossier or the repeats or the TMZs going more macro side versus just nano influencer because the macros are going to get they're going to pull the the headlines like the micros unless you have like a conglomerate of micros going to discuss it. It's not going to hit usually being followed by publications like that to begin with. Yeah, I would say mid even mid tier people that like are socially relevant rather than just like the super micros.

Meta ASC Campaigns and UGC

36:41Hi, just a question on meta ASC campaigns which are being pushed left and right. How are you thinking about funnel because you can't really target an ASC top of funnel midbottom. How does UGC partnerships play into that? Are you even thinking about that? And then just separately, we've been getting a lot of inbound from Google on Brand Connect as a competitor to Tik Tok affiliate campaigns. And so just wanted to hear your thoughts on YouTube Brand Connect.

37:11So two very random things. A lot of thoughts on on Brand Connect. I'm not super familiar with it. I'm not going to sit up here and [ __ ] with you because you'd call me out on it anyway. So I'll leave that there. Can you go back to the first question? Yeah, just just with Meta pushing ASC and it's hard to do top of funnel, midfunnel, bottom funnel. How are you thinking? Are you using UGC in any way to think about that? Because as a brand, it's just it's just Can I reask this question for you?

37:35Sure. No problem. And I also keep that for Nicholas towards the end because we talk about campaign structures a little bit. So because of the ASC campaign and the reliance of AI for metas for the audience segmentation, how are we thinking about or what is our recommendation on actually creating top offunnel content through UGC or creator content when we we can't necessarily target as much in the ad account? Oh yeah. Yeah. It's this is this is about language. This is about the language in the content. I think there's certain language that is more conducive to awareness. This brand is great for this lifestyle. This brand is like lifestyle leading creatives versus if I didn't have product like this, I wouldn't be able to accomplish X. Or take it down a notch to like now you're talking about demo UGC. Now you're talking about open opening up product product release UGC. So it's it's all about the content if that I hope that's translating well. but I see the problem. I definitely see the problem.

38:35Whereas you could otherwise just target all through the funnel. traditionally, now you've got to kind of tailor your content to meet the funnel criteria. so just to kind of re rephrase that, top of funnel, we're talking awareness. We're talking lifestyle. Midfunnel to late funnel, we're talking if I don't have this, I'm suffering. If I don't have X, I suffer with Y. This is the this is a a box opening I think is a really really big one as well here because that shows the practical application of the product and in use it's almost like a traditional hero shot and that's more inducive to purchase decisions on the spot. that's a complex a really good question.

39:11It's complex. I don't know if you have I don't have an answer. Yeah, it's it's a different one. I'll cover you a little screwed I'll I'll cover you a little bit deeper on this too because you you short answer is no. You're not looking to segment this as much. Long answer is it's just unique ASC campaigns. Yeah. For landing pages that they're not able to get overall. So like in some of our ASC campaigns, we we have basically one core product, two core products now that we're able to sell. All the content is this ASC is just my top of funnel content. This ASC is a lot more middle of funnel content. So I'm using it as an organizational structure rather than necessarily of like I need to put everything in here. Granted, there are going to be performance issues if you do not have the diversity of creative in each ASD campaign. That is the Andromeda [ __ ] we're all dealing with now that rolled out about a month ago. So, when he's talking about you need creative

40:05diversity that says this is going to be an unboxing because that's more top of funnel or this is a heavy benefit feature content that's a little bit you're in that you know something aware of. This is a hope and pray trust meta that you got your thing correct situation. Yeah, you're you're kind of asking a question that Andromeda is sort of here to just remove altogether. That's why it's so or so they're telling us. So they're telling we don't know if we're in the matrix right now as well, right? So we don't really know. you it's it's it's complex, but we can't come at it from a a scarcity mindset. It's got to be a mindset of abundance being like, "Okay, this is different." But ultimately, the goal is to net ourselves more conversions down the line is to net ourselves a larger audience. So, when you have that thinking in place to start, what does that mean for your brand? And then you can create content for that messaging at scale, we're told

41:01Andromeda can do the rest of the work for us. So we sort of it's it's a bit of a leap of faith at the moment. But Andromeda, if you think about it on the other side, what's Meta's point here? What are they going after? They're looking for authenticity. like if you look at studio created content, like we were saying before, that lacks the magic. That's not good for impressions across meta. That's not good for conversions across the meta ecosystem in its entirety. But if we're at scale highquality UGC content, now we're talking about an ecosystem that people are massively engaging with all through the funnel. So that's the that's the net benefit that kind of helped me understand it when I was starting to think about, well, why would they do that in the first place? That's kind of why. John Kirby, thank you guys so much for your time. Great questions, guys.